Huge fashion chain could close a THIRD of its stores across UK triggering 100s of job losses in blow to high street
A POPULAR fast fashion chain could see as many as a third of its stores shutter across the country.
Retailer Quiz plans to make moves as part of a survival operation to stay afloat.
Quiz, led by the founding Ramzan family, has around 60 stores across the UK and employs about 1,500 people.
Restructuring experts have been brought in by chair of the company Peter Cowgill in an attempt to save the brand.
Chief executive Sheraz Ramzan is understood to be eyeing up the worst-performing stores to cut.
As reported by the Tele, a pre-pack administration and a company voluntary arrangement have both been in talks.
A source added: “Nothing is being ruled out.”
The retailer, best known for it women’s party fashion ranges, warned at the start of December that a “significant reduction in revenues” could lead it to running out of cash in the new year.
Quiz has already called in advisers as it said it expects additional funding will be needed in the first quarter of 2025 and warned it might not be able to continue as a “going concern”.
The business has already gone through one restructuring in 2020 and renegotiated its rents as lockdowns damaged retailers.
The company halved in value since the start of December shortly before delisting from the stock market to save costs its value had shrank to just £3.6 million.
Advisers at Interpath are now trying to work on how to solve the growing crisis at the firm.
Execs have already taken out a £1million loan from Sheraz’s father, Tarak, in a desperate bid to save the chain last summer.
Quiz revealed they made nearly a £7million loss last year, but only took home £2.3million in profit the previous year.
HSBC is now understood to be cautious about pouring anymore cash into the company.
This comes as other major retailers may be facing the same fate in 2025.
ShoeZone has been one of the first retailers to blame the Chancellor’s Budget for store closures.
The business, which has 297 shops across the UK with 2,250 employees, said the tax raid on business and extra costs would result in “the planned closure of a number of stores that have now become unviable”.
The chain did not reveal how many stores would be shut but halved its forecasts for the year from £10 million to £5 million.
Meanwhile online retailer ASOS has had a bruising time and its market value has crashed by almost 90% since its peak in 2021.
Asos is now worth just £450 million and it has had to sell off a majority stake in Topshop to raise cash and secure an expensive loan facility with high interest costs from Bantry Bay.
Boohoo has been another online retailer that has come undone since lockdowns were lifted.
To save costs it has shut its expensive warehouse in the US and cut jobs at its Manchester headquarters and sold its London office.
It is also facing a battle with its biggest investor Mike Ashley, the Sports Direct billionaire.
Boohoo is now considering a break-up of the business which could see brands such as Pretty Little Thing, Dorothy Perkins and Nasty Gal separated.
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THE Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has also warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year.
It comes on the back of a tough 2024 when 13,000 shops closed their doors for good, already a 28% increase on the previous year.
Professor Joshua Bamfield, director of the CRR said: “The results for 2024 show that although the outcomes for store closures overall were not as poor as in either 2020 or 2022, they are still disconcerting, with worse set to come in 2025.”
It comes after almost 170,000 retail workers lost their jobs in 2024.
End-of-year figures compiled by the Centre for Retail Research showed the number of job losses spiked amid the collapse of major chains such as Homebase and Ted Baker.
It said its latest analysis showed that a total of 169,395 retail jobs were lost in the 2024 calendar year to date.
This was up 49,990 – an increase of 41.9% – compared with 2023.
It is the highest annual reading since more than 200,000 jobs were lost in 2020 in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced retailers to shut their stores during lockdowns.
The centre said 38 major retailers went into administration in 2024, including household names such as Lloyds Pharmacy, Homebase, The Body Shop, Carpetright and Ted Baker.
Around a third of all retail job losses in 2024, 33% or 55,914 in total, resulted from administrations.
Experts have said small high street shops could face a particularly challenging 2025 because of Budget tax and wage changes.
Professor Bamfield has warned of a bleak outlook for 2025, predicting that as many as 202,000 jobs could be lost in the sector.
“By increasing both the costs of running stores and the costs on each consumer’s household it is highly likely that we will see retail job losses eclipse the height of the pandemic in 2020.”