Attention: Online Fashion Retailer Asos Successfully Acquired With 295 Million Pounds

Online fashion retailer ASOs has agreed to buy Arcadia group's Topshop, Topman, miss Selfridge and HIIT brands, including 30 million worth of inventory, for 295 million pounds (US $405 million). The transaction is expected to close on February 4, 2021.

This means that China's fast fashion retailer sheen, which was exposed to have bid 300 million pounds for Topshop, has lost the opportunity to realize rapid globalization through the acquisition of Topshop. It is reported that sheen also planned to make a separate acquisition plan for other brands of Acadia group. However, according to the current news, the rest of Acadia Group brands seem to want to spend on fashion retail giant boohoo.

Arcadia group was a fashion retailer in the UK with seven major high street brands: Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Evans, miss Selfridge, Topshop, Topman and Wallis. It is reported that the total revenue of Topshop and other brands in 2019 will be about 1 billion pounds. Affected by the epidemic, consumers of offline shopping decreased, and Acadia group started bankruptcy proceedings in late November last year.

Prior to that, top shop, the owner of Barney's, was also involved in the bidding of authentic Brands Group LLC, the owner of Barney's, and the fashion retailer next. But a consortium of next and Davidson Kempner capital management, an American investment firm, pulled out of the bid on January 22 because it "failed to meet the price expectations of Arcadia.".

It is understood that in addition to paying 295 million pounds to buy the brand, ASOs also needs to repay 30 million pounds of debt to Topshop. After the acquisition, all stores in Topshop will be closed and will only operate online; about 2500 jobs will be lost and about 300 employees will continue to work at ASOs.

This acquisition is of great significance to ASOs. In the past few decades, Topshop has almost dominated the fashion trend in the UK. ASOs hopes to expand its user base in its well-known US and Europe by acquiring brands such as Topshop.

Nick beighton, chief executive of ASOs, said the acquisition of the four brands, Topshop, Topman, miss Selfridge and HIIT, would "resonate" with ASOs's core customer base in its 20s.

He added: "the acquisition of these iconic UK brands is a very exciting moment for ASOs, which will help speed up our multi brand platform strategy. We will use our design, marketing, technical and logistics expertise to work closely with key strategic retail partners in the UK and around the world to further develop these brands. "