How Sir Philip Green Can Transform Topshop | Business

A visit to Topshop's flagship store features many styles, including floral skirts, casual jackets and cut jeans. Even the cornerstone of Sir Phillip Green's retail empire needs to be repaired urgently.

"That makes me think of a very pretty Marks & Spencer from 20 years ago," says James Clark of the London College of Fashion while he walks around the six-story Topshop and Topman site located on Oxford Street, London.

While the fashionable Urban Outfitters, located next door, offers festival-ready outfits, such as floating dresses and floral shirts with reusable water bottles, Topshop's fashion models give the impression of dress for a wedding or barbecue parents.

"It seems a little on the edge of culture, a bit of white middle clbad. If this is targeting a young street population of conscious consumerism, "says Clark.

Topshop and Topman, who were once fashion leaders and who appeared in Vogue with celebrities who claimed to attend his fashion shows, have lost their edge and seem confused about the target they are aiming for.

Green admitted Thursday to the BBC that Arcadia, the retail group behind Topshop and other major retail brands, may not have reacted quickly enough to a market that has "changed fundamentally ". He said, "Whether we have not changed fast enough or we have too many stores or something else, I think it's a combination of a lot of things. The answer is that you can not understand everything. "

While the flagship store is aimed at the under-40s – the millennials and the Z generation – there are few references to the themes that matter to them: sustainability; multicultural urban life; and the kind-fluidity. There is no link to the online world of selfies and sharing your purchases.

Hannah Middleton, a London College of Fashion Fashion Lecturer, said, "Generation Z is like a link to a story it can draw on. There is no evidence of this and our students are aware of Green. Even high school students with whom I worked say that they will not go to Starbucks because they do not pay tax. They are aware of what is happening in a way that my generation may not have been and react accordingly. "

While Oxford Street is home to a hairdresser, eyebrow bar and a Benugo café, the multi-faceted destination store that Primark recently opened in Birmingham offers a multi-faceted destination store with at least one a beauty service on each floor.

And this store exposes Arcadia's challenge. Primark would have spent £ 70m in the shop, while Arcadia would only book £ 75m to reorganize hundreds of sites as part of a £ 135m recovery plan.

If the flagship projects of Topshop and Topman London need work, many smaller and denser stores across the country must struggle to make a profit. It also has six other brands – Wallis, Miss Selfridge, Evans, Burton, Dorothy Perkins and Outfit – which have deviated even more from the course than the two major brands.

This week, Green has secured creditor approval for a restructuring that will allow Arcadia to close 50 initial stores, on a fleet of 570 self-contained units, and reduce rents by nearly 200 others, with the loss of 1 000 jobs. Topshop has more than 300 points of sale in the UK, including stand-alone sites. But the store, rent and job cuts will only boost profits in the short term. Arcadia will have to make even more difficult decisions in the coming years if it wants to last.

Reducing the eight brands of his Arcadia empire and closing many other stores should be at the top of the list.

"It is very likely that decisions will be made regarding the closing of one to four different channels rather than keeping all those bullets in the air in a market where nothing prevents the growth of online commerce," says Nick Bubb, independent retail badyst. "The advance of Primark and the uploading has been [Green’s] the knell of death.

Miss Selfridge and Evans are already on the verge of closing most of their stores and are focusing on selling online or wholesale.

Maureen Hinton, an badyst at GlobalData, a retail firm, said Green should focus on Topshop and Topman: "These are the ones who have fallen back less. If they had the right person to lead them with a brand vision and an understanding of the target market, you could recover those brands. "