End. Clothing grew fast, built a warehouse — then lost £43M in one year

End. Clothing was founded in 2005 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Christiaan Ashworth and John Parker. What started as a single menswear shop became one of the UK's leading premium streetwear retailers, stocking 500+ brands including Nike, Off-White, Stone Island, and Balenciaga, shipping to over 100 countries. In September 2021, private equity firm Carlyle Group bought a majority stake at a £750 million valuation, with Apollo Global Management helping finance the deal.

To handle its growing scale, End. installed a new automated warehouse fulfilment system in 2022. The system went catastrophically wrong — it created logistical problems that prevented End. from shipping products to customers. In the year to March 2023, End. wrote off £12 million in stock that could not be sold because of the warehouse chaos, while paying additional costs for manual fulfilment workarounds. Pre-tax profit crashed 76% to £9 million on flat revenue of £221 million. EBITDA collapsed 68% to £13 million.

The company said it was "confident" the issues were resolved, but the damage continued. In the year to March 2024, End. reported a pre-tax loss of £43 million — swinging from a £9 million profit. Revenue fell 3.8% to £212.7 million, and the retailer slashed stock intake to reduce inventory exposure, bringing stock down from £92.7 million to £62 million. The warehouse system hangover — impairments, consultancy costs, and removing old stock — remained the largest single factor.

In October 2024, Apollo Global Management acquired End. from Carlyle in a recapitalisation. Founders Ashworth and Parker stepped back from the board, retaining only economic interests. The deal came months before the £43 million loss was publicly known, meaning Apollo bought a business whose problems were deeper than the 2023 results suggested. End. claimed the warehouse system was now delivering "significant efficiencies" and "improved service levels," but the cost of learning that lesson was tens of millions of pounds and founder control of the business.