Austin Reed, 116 years of suits, shut all 120 shops a month after administration

Austin Reed began as a City of London tailoring shop in 1900 and built its name on ready-to-wear suits that could pass as made-to-measure — a formula that put a flagship on Regent Street by 1911, a concession on the liner Queen Elizabeth, a royal warrant, and Winston Churchill among its customers. In 2006 an investment firm took the group private in a £49 million deal. A decade later the formula was failing: 100 standalone stores, 50 concessions and 1,184 staff across the UK and Ireland, and sales falling year after year.

Analysts blamed a poorly designed website and tired stores — symptoms of an estate managed for cash rather than reinvested in. By spring 2016 the cash had gone: on 19 April Alteri Investors, which specialises in 'stressed and distressed retail situations', bought the group's outstanding loan notes and shareholder capital. A week later, on 26 April and less than 24 hours after BHS, AlixPartners' Peter Saville, Kevin Coates and Catherine Williamson were appointed joint administrators over six group companies, from Austin Reed Group to its property arm.

The administrators kept the stores trading while marketing the business as a whole. No whole-business buyer came: 'a viable solution which kept the business whole was not forthcoming', Saville said. On 31 May he announced a full wind-down — all 120 stores to close by the end of June, about 1,000 jobs gone. Edinburgh Woollen Mill, Philip Day's retail group, bought the Austin Reed and Country Casuals brands and five Boundary Mills outlet concessions, keeping 28 staff. The shops, the leases and the 1,000 jobs were part of nobody's offer.

All 120 shops shut by June 2016 and 1,000 staff gone; a brand taken private for £49m in 2006 survived only as a trademark sold out of administration.

A suit specialist did not follow its customer online or into casualwear; analysts blamed a poorly designed website and tired stores while sales fell year after year.

A decade of private ownership had optimised the estate for cash, leaving the brand famous and the shops unsellable.

The April rescue was a debt purchase: once Alteri held the loan notes, administration — where the brands could be bought cheaply — was an option rather than a risk.

After six weeks of marketing there was no whole-business buyer, so the 116-year-old name was worth more as a trademark than as a retailer.

Heritage brands die of substitution, not age. When the customer moves on and the estate was run for cash, the trademark can be worth more than the business — and the buyer arrives holding the debt.

Edinburgh Woollen Mill folded Austin Reed into its stable as an online and outlet brand. The pattern did not spare the buyer: Philip Day's Edinburgh Woollen Mill Group entered administration itself in 2020 after pandemic closures, and in early 2021 its chains were sold on with 85 EWM stores shut permanently at the cost of 485 jobs. Of the 1,184 people working for Austin Reed when the administrators arrived, about 1,000 were out of work by the end of June 2016, and the estates of six companies were wound down by AlixPartners.