The encyclopedia · Sales & Retail · Strategic decision · 2018–2020
Monsoon Accessorize lost £22.5M a year before the lockdown — then the lockdown finished it
A 47-year-old British fashion chain was already losing money when the pandemic hit. Administration came in June 2020: 35 stores closed, 545 jobs gone.
Monsoon Accessorize · 2020-06-10
What happened
Monsoon was founded by Peter Simon in 1973, with its first shop in Beauchamp Place, London. By the late 2010s it operated around 200 stores — 181 in the UK and 19 in Italy — under the Monsoon and Accessorize brands, selling women's fashion, accessories and homeware. Turnover for the year to August 2018 was £296 million, but the company posted a post-tax loss of £22.5 million.
The losses were not new. Rising rents, wage costs and a shift to online shopping had been eroding the business for years. In July 2019, landlords agreed rent cuts at 135 stores under a company voluntary arrangement — a formal restructuring that signalled the chain could not afford its existing lease obligations.
The pandemic removed whatever margin of survival remained. On 10 June 2020, Monsoon Accessorize entered administration. The company said its current structure was 'unviable' following the lockdown. Thirty-five stores closed and 545 jobs were lost. The remaining 162 shops were to be renegotiated with landlords.
In a pre-pack deal, the assets were sold to a business controlled by Peter Simon himself — the founder buying back his own chain out of insolvency. Stores in the Republic of Ireland, including Dublin, Cork and Kilkenny, also closed. Simon later bought the company out of bankruptcy again in late 2022.
Why it happened
- The chain was already loss-making before the pandemic: £22.5 million post-tax loss on £296 million turnover left no reserve for a demand shock
- A 2019 CVA — rent cuts at 135 stores — showed the lease portfolio was unaffordable, but the underlying cost structure was not restructured beyond the rent reduction
- The pandemic did not cause the failure; it removed the last quarter of trading income that was keeping a loss-making chain technically solvent
- The pre-pack sale back to the founder preserved the brand but not the jobs or the stores — 545 positions and 35 locations were the cost of the restructuring
The lesson
A CVA that cuts rent but does not fix the cost structure buys time, not a future. When the next shock arrives — and one always does — the company that was already losing money is the first to fall.
Aftermath
Peter Simon continued to operate a reduced Monsoon Accessorize chain. The brand survived in a smaller form, but the 2020 administration marked the end of its presence as a major British high-street name. The case is cited alongside other 2020 UK retail casualties — Debenhams, Oasis, Warehouse — as part of the pandemic's restructuring of British fashion retail.
Sources
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