Aurora Fashions to sell Bastyan stake

Aurora Fashions, the group that owns Coast and Warehouse, is to sell its stake in ailing fashion brand Bastyan.Aurora’s profits dropped 2.3 million pounds to 12.7 million pounds in the full year to the end of February, 2012, due mostly to the

non-performing of the brand.

Aurora chairman Derek Lovelock told Drapers: “We launched the brand with a full retail team in place with the drive to get it to critical mass as quickly as possible. When we realised that in this environment it was unlikely to happen, we took the difficult decision to separate from our total ownership of Bastyan. It is a difficult time to launch a brand and there is also an issue of scale,” he added. “We are used to working with large-scale retail businesses and this is not our area of expertise.”

Aurora is expected to keep a small share of the business when it sells its majority stake. A “handful” of redundancies are being made within the brand’s concessions staff based in House of Fraser, which it is pulling out of, as well as some head office roles.

As a result of the sale Bastyan will not continue with its wholesale operation, which debuted for autumn 12. The brand will continue to be retailed via Dublin department store Brown Thomas, online at John Lewis and through its www.bastyan.co.uk website, reported Drapers.

Aurora Fashions is an omni-channel retailer operating 1250 stores in 38 countries. The company has a global turnover of 500 million pounds and employs 6,900 workers.

Image: Bastyan AW12