The Interview: TM Lewin MD on reviving the brand, reclaiming the high street and taking on Charles Tyrwhitt and Hawes & Curtis

Following the success of its first flagship store, which opened on Bow Lane in the City of London in April, TM Lewin added a second flagship store in Canary Wharf last month - both fuelled by a back-to-office boom - as well as a new cut-price store at Outlet Shopping at The O2.

Since opening the Bow Lane store, TM Lewin has sold over 7,000 shirts in-store, with tailoring now representing 30% of sales. Across all channels, shirt sales are up 43% year-on-year, while overall revenue this year has grown by around 40% compared to last year. The introduction of casualwear has also driven growth, with hybrid working playing a key factor.

With more store openings planned for 2026, it marks an exciting new chapter for one of Britain’s most iconic menswear brands. Dan Ferris, who originally joined TM Lewin as Finance Director four years ago, has been Managing Director for the past year - guiding it back to being a physical retail business once again to challenge the likes of Charles Tyrwhitt and Hawes & Curtis. He gives his take on a very different TM Lewin from the business that was bought out of a second administration in two years in April 2022.

What’s a brief round-up of the recent history of TM Lewin?

TM Lewin got into financial trouble during Covid, for obvious reasons, as no one was wearing formalwear during that time. They were actually seeking a sale prior to the pandemic and, reading between the lines, they would have been facing competitive headwinds at the time. I suppose the pandemic was the nail in the coffin.

The business was put into administration, at which point it still had around 60 stores in the UK and six in Australia, which pre-dates my time with the company. They all had to be closed. However, over the past few years (since 2022), it has been owned by a private equity firm called Petra Group, which is based in the US, and the business has been restructured. We completed a comprehensive turnaround, rebuilding the foundations of the business. We reset the brand and product strategy and, as of April 2025, brought it back to the high street with a flagship store at 44 Bow Lane in the City of London. We’ve also just opened a second flagship at Canary Wharf, and there are more stores planned in 2026.

Was TM Lewin just selling online when you joined in 2022?

When I came in, TM Lewin was only trading online in the UK with shirts and suits from the legacy business, which wasn’t really viable. We relaunched our online international business in February 2024, but selling formal shirts and suits online is not an easy sell. Hence we’ve now relaunched our bricks-and-mortar portfolio, and that’s our strategy going forward, as most people know TM Lewin for formalwear and prefer to try a suit on in-store, as well as find the right size in shirts. It’s also about brand visibility and restoring TM Lewin’s iconic presence on the UK high street.

How are things different now?

Business is booming. We’ve certainly been helped by the drive back to the office, particularly with a lot of the big banks in the city where most people wear formal shirts. As part of our brand reset, we had to look at what the consumer demand was, and that does seem to have changed a lot from, say, the 2010s when it was mostly shirts and suits. It’s now about hybrid working, so we’ve developed the range around that.

What we’ve got now is a range that fits with being in the office in a suit and shirt for a board meeting on a Monday; then another day you might just wear a shirt without a jacket - right the way through to Friday when you might be working from home. So, we’ve now got things like T-shirts, rugby shirts, quarter-zip knitwear, polo shirts, gilets, and chinos in the range. That more casual side is doing fantastically well for us. I think customers are now realising that TM Lewin is a destination where you can shop for whatever the occasion is - whether that’s working from home or going to a board meeting.

In terms of sales, what percentage is casualwear compared to formalwear?

It’s in the region of about 30%, so formalwear is still a big driver for us - particularly shirts - but casualwear has come out of nowhere and now represents almost a third of our business. It’s been particularly strong in the past year, and we’re doubling down on that next year with new lines to complement what we’ve already done.

How has the first store in Bow Lane in the City of London performed since opening last April?

Bow Lane was the first one back; we wanted to be in the heart of the city, and it’s been fantastic. We’ve had really strong feedback from customers and that’s what really drove the decision to open at Canary Wharf last month. In terms of what it has done for us, I think it has delivered that uplift in tailoring, as 30% of sales in the Bow Lane store have been suits. That’s much higher than we get online. Around 40-50% of our sales, both online and in-store, are shirts.

Do you still offer multiple purchase deals?

Yes, we’ve stayed true to offering deals on multiple purchases; for example, you can get four shirts for £160 - so £40 per shirt. If you just buy one shirt it’s £65. We also offer deals on two or three items, which our competitors don’t, so it’s a strong point of difference. If someone is in the office for just two days a week, they can buy two shirts for £100, while three shirts cost £135.

Our best-selling shirts are our twill slim-fit options, as well as poplin and Oxfords. What we’ve done with the shirts is reduced the range drastically, as I think that part of where TM Lewin went wrong in the past is to not ask customers what they really wanted. Unfortunately, that ended up with this massive range of shirts. Yes, some customers might have wanted an elephant or flamingo print on a shirt, but 99% of the customer base didn’t want that! The stock pool became incredibly fragmented, but now we’ve taken it back to the core and it seems to be going really well. We’re just trying to expand the range in the way that customers now shop.

Who are your main competitors?

It’s still Charles Tyrwhitt and Hawes & Curtis, albeit they are larger than us at the moment. For now, they probably don’t view us as too much competition. Charles Tyrwhitt is a phenomenal business. They have really capitalised on TM Lewin not being around in recent years.

How confident are you in growing physical retail and do you think it’s important again?

I think so. From what we’re seeing, there seems to be a real drive back to the high street, and we’re certainly looking to expand further next year. Looking at different locations, it does seem to be quite competitive out there, but I’d say we’ll be looking for at least three or four locations, which will predominantly be in London, though we’re also looking further afield in the likes of Manchester and Edinburgh. It’s really just a case of choosing the best locations we can to get TM Lewin firmly back on the high street. However, we’re not going to expand willy-nilly - it’s got to be done in the right way.

In terms of store size, we’ve gone quite large with our first two as Bow Lane and Canary Wharf are our flagships. They are both about 1,800 sq ft. We’re now looking at slightly different types of stores for our future roll-out, as we don’t need every store to be that size. We still need space to present our shirts in the best way, so we’re probably looking at how we can fit into a sub-1,000 sq ft space and still achieve that.

What prompted opening a debut cut-price store at Outlet Shopping at the O2?

As we rebuild the physical estate, the outlet format gives us a highly effective way to present end-of-line and overstock products to customers who are motivated by value. While our full-price stores continue to trade well, Outlet Shopping at The O2 allows us to serve a more price-conscious customer segment without diluting the brand. It’s a complementary channel that helps us optimise stock, reach a broader audience, and support a more efficient overall retail model.

Add to that, The O2 is one of the UK’s highest-footfall retail destinations, attracting a diverse mix of domestic and international customers. It has a strong reputation for outlet value, fashion brands, and experiential retail, which aligns well with how TM Lewin is evolving. The environment gives us the opportunity to showcase the brand to new customers who may not engage with traditional high-street locations.

What is TM Lewin’s real USP?

It’s brand heritage, as TM Lewin is an over 125-year-old brand, and that means something (TM Lewin was founded in 1898 by Geoffrey James Lewin and Thomas Mayes Lewin on Panton Street in London, before becoming established on nearby Jermyn Street in 1903). As the management team now, we are the custodians of the brand, and it’s about making that heritage relevant in the modern world. It’s now about evolving and unlocking what that means for hybrid working, for example. Hopefully, we’re doing a good job of that.

What can you do better than other formalwear and smart casualwear brands?

We call it the “professional lifestyle wardrobe.” We’re never going to have jeans with holes in our range. Our strength is in our versatility and how our range can mix and match. We’re intentionally bringing items into the range that are adaptable. You might wear chinos with a shirt one day, but you can also wear the chinos with a T-shirt or polo. The colours in the range are easy to mix and match.

Our customer is the sort of guy who is probably a high-net-worth individual and doesn’t want to think too much about how he dresses. He’s a guy in the city who wants to pop into Lewin on his lunch break and get his shirts, T-shirts, chinos, or whatever, in one hit. He just wants to come in, get kitted out, and know that he’s going to look good walking around the office or at the weekend.

What are your best-selling suits?

The suit side has been really interesting. TM Lewin had a vast range of suits, but what we’ve seen is that our best-selling suits are actually our most expensive ones. The feedback we’re getting from customers is that they are coming back to us from other brands, as they haven’t been able to get the quality they were previously getting from TM Lewin. Instead of having maybe three different suits they wear through the week, they’re now wearing one really high-quality suit, and that’s where we seem to be winning. They can come to us and get a navy or charcoal Vitale Barberis Italian wool suit for £500 - that’s our premium price point. Our bottom-end price point is £300, and that’s still a really great suit that we’re very proud of, but we do see our customers gravitating towards the £500 price point - purely because they want that one really good-quality suit as opposed to two of those £300 suits.

Waistcoats aren’t as popular as they were, so it tends to be our two-piece suits rather than three-piece that people want now, particularly with a single-breasted, two-button jacket. We’ve also just introduced a flannel suit range, which is slightly more casual. Again, we’ve done it so customers can mix and match - for example, a flannel blazer in navy with trousers in grey.

Are you looking at introducing more casual lines?

We are indeed - next summer will probably be the most casual we’ve ever been. Having had such success with T-shirts, we’re going to be introducing shorts as well. There will be multiple-purchase deals across both of those categories too, making them perfect for people going on holiday. The organic cotton T-shirts are £25 each, or five for £50, so we’re driving basket volume with that - the same approach we use for our shirts.

We’re also expanding our polos and linen shirts offering for next summer. Off the back of the success we’ve had with our chinos, we’ve recently added a smart, slim-fit five-pocket jean with a touch of stretch - more like a jean you could wear on a more casual day at work. We’ve expanded the offering for the top half of the body a lot, so now we’re looking at increasing our offering for the bottom half. If the jeans prove successful, we may introduce a regular fit and more colours, similar to what we’ve done with the chinos. The jeans are the same price as the chinos: £80 each, or two pairs for £120.