Financial struggle and restructuring
Since then several measures have been implemented by New Look in an attempt to achieve a turnaround. The retailer stopped all operations in China, and a number of UK retail stores was shut down, following which profits made a comeback from the negative figures of the previous year. While the loss of UK stores had a visible impact on the recovering profits, the brand’s e-commerce business, New Look’s most successful revenue stream, also made significant contributions.New Look trades in an increasingly competitive fashion retail environment, where many relatively young brands such as Boohoo and PrettyLittleThing offer cheap and stylish clothing, and online marketplaces like ASOS are becoming increasingly popular with fashion shoppers. Data on consumers’ fashion brand searches online showed that while conventional high street retailers such as New Look, M&S, and Debenhams fell out of fashion, PrettyLittleThing and Boohoo were in the top three brand searches on Google.
