THE chairman of fashion chain French Connection today said the company had suffered a "disappointing" year, but noted that the new year had kicked off more positively, with good growth in its UK stores.
Stephen Marks said the chain had suffered from a poor retail performance in its spring/summer collection last year and saw full-year pre-tax profit plummet 67 per cent to £4 million from £12.2m.
Turnover slipped to £241.3m over the 12 months to the end of January from £246.3m last year.
But the firm, which also owns designer label Nicole Farhi and mail order fashion business Toast, said like-for-like sales in its UK and Europe stores were already showing good growth in the new financial year and were up ten per cent on last year.
French Connection, which closed down two under-performing stores and three concessions last year, said it would not be afraid to "trim the portfolio" further.
Mr Marks said: "The financial results for the last year are very disappointing.
However, we believe that there is good evidence to indicate that we are at the start of a new phase in our business cycle. The results for the year reflect the continued impact of the difficulties we first experienced in 2005."
He added: "While there remains much to achieve, the new financial year has started with good growth in our UK retail stores and we believe we are now in a position to build momentum on this encouraging start to the year.
"
Want to read yourself in print? Every day the Evening News publishes a selection of online comments on the letters page of the paper. Pick up a copy to see if your views have been published.
News RSS