Seasalt up for sale after seeing good growth

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Sep 27, 2021

Cornish fashion brand Seasalt is up for sale after a period of strong sales this summer as the staycation boom saw Britons holidaying in the UK and buying the label’s clothes.

The 15-year-old retailer was founded by brothers Leigh, Neil and David Chadwick, who retain control and are in “early talks” about bringing in new investors, the Telegraph reported. Other current investors in the business include BGF and Santander.

The brand in its current form was born out of a Cornish store that the Chadwicks’ father bought 40 years ago. But its expansion began under the next generation with the chain now comprising 70 stores selling clothing with links to a Cornish/coastal lifestyle. It also sells online in 150+ countries and has third-party deals with big name webstores such as Zalando and M&S.

As it’s a privately-held company, its publicly available sales figures have a time lag, but we know that the company made sales of more than £75 million in the year to February 2020. Its next set of results isn’t theoretically due for a few months so we don’t have official recent figures showing how it did in the pandemic.

But earlier this year, a festive season trading update said that its sales jumped during the Christmas period. And even though it endured a 44% fall in sales through physical shops, its webstore easily made up for the shortfall with a 95% increase. Total sales rose 17% and  international sales were up 20% in the five weeks to January 2.

It also said that store sales for the pandemic year-to-date (up to the end of January) were expected to be around 57% down, with online up 72% but the overall figure being a sales drop. And it also warned that profits would be hit.

Yet the latest news suggests that it appears to have recovered strongly post-lockdown with uncertainty over international travel giving it a boost.

Under CEO Paul Hayes, it appears to have a bright future and regarding the up-for-sale report, it said: “Seasalt is enjoying a strong year and has ambitious plans for the future. As part of those plans, we are in the very early stages of exploring a number of options to support further online and offline growth both in the UK and internationally. We have no further information to share at this time.”