Retail 25
Check out the Retail 25 report, a curated compilation that highlights the phenomenal achievements and industry insights of the top UK retail performers.
How Fashion UK aims to treble its business
Fashion UK isn’t your average fashion business. Licensing is at the heart of the Leicester-based company, which makes and designs clothing featuring popular characters from the likes of brands such as Disney, Warner Bros, Netflix and Lego.
How next-day delivery ensured success for customer-focused Mattress Online
Mattress Online started in December 2003, appropriately from co-founder Steve Adams’ bedroom. Starting with just five products, it took two weeks for the company to sell its first mattress, and another two weeks to make another. Sales fortunately picked up in January – the peak month for furniture and homeware shopping – and the company has never looked back.
Online fashion retailer Sosandar aims for global growth as sales surge
It’s been a challenging couple of years for retailers, with the cost of living crisis impacting sales and increasing costs for businesses. But one company managing to weather the crisis is Sosandar, an online fashion firm targeting the over-30s.
Interview with Fairfax & Favor’s Felix Favor Parker
Appropriately enough for a brand that began with leather footwear, Fairfax & Favor was thoroughly bootstrapped. Founders Marcus Fairfax Fountaine and Felix Favor Parker funded the Norfolk-based business through its early days by working summer jobs in the local pub and delivering fireplaces. They kept their stock in Parker’s mum’s attic.
Interview with Beauty Pie’s Marcia Kilgore
Beauty Pie is a buyer’s club for luxury make up, without the markup. To illustrate the concept, founder Marcia Kilgore holds up a lipstick sample she received from a supplier.
Growing pains: How to stay agile as you scale
GX leaders offer their advice for retaining entrepreneurial spirit. No company stays young forever. With success comes size, and size inevitably slows you down: eventually, today’s disruptors will themselves be disrupted.
The UK needsmore than one growth engine
The companies on this list are achieving exceptional things and deserve our warmest congratulations. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we had more of them? For too long, we’ve been like a plane running on one engine, with opportunity limited for large sections of the population. To unleash the UK’s full potential we need to get the whole country firing.
How to make purpose practical
If you ask CEOs what their company’s purpose is, very few will say to make money. Most will reel off their mission – the thing they aim for that, if satisfied, will produce a financial return.
Money talks
There was a slight drop this year in the number of GX companies that had received venture capital or private equity funding, from 47 to 41.
