Barratts: three administrations in five years, and the family kept buying it back

In January 2009 the Barratts and PriceLess shoe chains — 400 stores and 5,450 staff owned by Bradford's Stylo — went into administration. Deloitte tried to restructure through a CVA, but Stylo had already conceded the core problem in its own statement: 'current and projected sales cannot support the current cost base of the business, in particular the high rent obligations.' Stylo's shares were suspended while the parent stayed out of administration.

The outcome set a pattern. Deloitte closed 220 stores, and Stylo chairman Michael Ziff bought 160 shops back from the administrators, safeguarding around 3,000 jobs. In December 2011 the restructured business collapsed again; after 1,610 concession-staff redundancies — the 371 in-store concessions, including Dorothy Perkins counters, had no buyer — a January 2012 management buyout led by Ziff kept 89 shops and 1,184 jobs while 680 more jobs went with 53 closures.

Blame each time fell on trading conditions: the consumer downturn in 2009, spending falls and 'unseasonably mild weather' in 2011-12. In November 2013 Barratts — then 75 stores and 23 concessions with 1,035 staff — went into administration a third time in four years. Duff & Phelps partner Philip Duffy said an investor had offered £5m of new equity but withdrew the offer days earlier, leaving directors 'no choice'. This time the family did not buy it back.

The administrators sold 14 stores to York-based rival Pavers before Christmas 2013, keeping just over 150 staff. What had begun with 400 stores and a plan to 'repay all creditors in full' ended as a much smaller estate inside a competitor, the two administrations in between having been used to shrink the leased estate and reset the cost base twice without ever fixing the format.

Across three collapses: 220 shops closed in 2009, 1,610 concession staff and 680 store jobs cut in 2011-12, 1,035 staff at risk in 2013

The original diagnosis was correct and never cured: Stylo itself said sales could not carry the cost base, 'in particular the high rent obligations' — a leased-estate problem, not a liquidity problem.

Buying the business out of administration lowered the family's cost of staying in control, but each buyback re-entered the same format with less room to invest.

The concessions business — 371 counters and 1,610 workers — failed to find any buyer at all, showing how little of the operation was viable outside the shops.

The 2013 collapse came when outside equity was asked to fund the model and declined: after two resets, £5m was more than the business was worth to a new investor.

Administration was run as a cycle — shed stores, hand the business back to the same owners. A reset is not a turnaround; by the third round the estate was a fraction of its size.

Duff & Phelps ran the 2013 wind-down; Pavers acquired 14 stores and kept just over 150 employees, calling the deal the bridgehead for its own high-street expansion. The Barratts name now survives only within a competitor's portfolio. Deloitte's two earlier administrations had each handed the chain back to the Ziff family smaller than before, a cycle that ended when the family itself stopped bidding in 2013.