Matches axes half its staff following plans to enter administration

Almost 300 Matches employees have lost their jobs after Frasers Group confirmed plans to place the luxury clothing retailer into administration less than three months after buying it.

A total of 273 staff have been dismissed to allow the business to trade through administration, according to the Financial Times. Matches employed 533 staff across its head office and three stores in London.

It comes after Frasers was informed that the directors of Matches have taken the decision to place the company into administration. It added the business was making "material losses" and "consistently" missing its target, revealing that the money needed to keep Matches running would be "far in excess" of what it thinks viable.

Frasers Group only bought Matches in December, in a deal worth £52 million. It was bought from private equity firm Apax Partners, which had owned the retailer since 2017.

In recent years, the business has been loss-making, and in the year to the end of January 2023 made a £33.5 million loss.

"Since Frasers Group acquired Matches, the business has consistently missed its business plan targets and, notwithstanding support from the group, has continued to make material losses," Frasers told shareholders on Friday.

"Whilst Matches’ management team has tried to find a way to stabilise the business, it has become clear that too much change would be required to restructure it, and the continued funding requirements would be far in excess of amounts that the group considers to be viable."

Matches was founded around 35 years ago by Tom and Ruth Chapman and began life as a single boutique in London's Wimbledon Village. It expanded into other high-end neighbourhoods including Richmond-upon-Thames, Marylebone and Notting Hill, and in 2018, it opened an experiential, digitally enabled townhouse shopping experience in Mayfair.

In the mid-2000s, Matches entered the online arena and, with that, gained a global reputation in global luxury and became a destination of discovery for up-and-coming and niche brands, as well as a home to some of the world's biggest designer names, from Saint Laurent to Gucci and Prada.

However, since the sale to Apax, it has faced a revolving door at the top of the business, with the CEO at the time of the sale to Apax, Ulric Jerome, departing in 2019. He was replaced in 2020 by Ajay Kavan, a former Amazon executive, who lasted just a year in the role. In September 2021, Paolo De Cesare, formerly of Printemps Group, took over and was gone by July 2022, when former ASOS CEO Nick Beighton took the helm.

Financial results deteriorated during the period and it also closed stores in Richmond-upon-Thames and Notting Hill. In January 2023, Apax injected a further £60 million into the business to fund a turnaround. By the end of the year, however, rumours of a sale emerged with Frasers Group, which also owns luxury super-boutique chain Flannels, emerging as the buyer paying a price that was a huge discount on that paid by Apax in 2017.