Boden international sales overtake the UK

Boden has boosted sales faster outside the UK for the first

time, after an uptick in demand in the US and Germany. 90 percent of total orders are made online, with the catalogue remaining a key feature.

The British fashion group, founded in 1991 by Johnnie Boden, said sales in America, where it launched in 2002, and Germany became the main sales leads. Meanwhile, the UK accounted for over 50 percent of the total sales.

"We are still growing in England but the international markets are growing faster. The US is now a 200 million dollars business. We are one of the most successful British clothing retailers in the US," Boden stressed on the latter.

In the UK, Boden said trading in the first few months of this year had been "very difficult" because of the extremely cold temperatures. However, April sales performed better, being described as “strong” by Boden.

Founder and chairman Johnnie Boden – who also remains the main shareholder with 60 percent of total shares, also said the mail order business remained committed to distributing 50 million catalogues a year, as its customers "love to browse" them before ordering products online.

For the year ending December 2011, the group had total sales of 245.9 million pounds. This was made up 125.9 million pounds from sales in the US and the rest of the world – with the US accounting for 85.7 million pounds, and UK sales coming at 125 million pounds. Sales in Germany, Austria, France totalled to 40.2 million pounds.

According to Boden's last accounts, pre-tax profits were 17.9 million pounds over the year to 31 December 2011. The company will report figures for 2012 in autumn.

Looking ahead, Boden advanced it was "highly unlikely" he would seek to float the business but refused to rule it out in the long-term.

As reported by ‘The Independent’, Boden said: "We are fortunate at the moment that we do not need to raise any money. There is no real reason [to float] unless we wanted to use equity to buy another company but we have quite a lot on our plate at the moment.