Cotswold Outdoor shops are a familiar sight on Britain's High Streets. Photo: Bob Smith/grough
The owners of troubled retailers Cotswold Outdoor and Snow+Rock are reported to be seeking a company voluntary arrangement.
Outdoor & Cycle Concepts, which also owns Cycle Surgery and Runners Need stores, is looking for rent reductions and also plans the closure of seven shops.
The heavily indebted company’s pre-tax losses have increased from £6.7m to £13.7m for the year ending December 2018, according to Retail World magazine.
A meeting of creditors will be held in May to approve the company voluntary agreement, which, if accepted, would see lower rents at 50 of its stores and the closure of unprofitable branches.
The Malmesbury, Wiltshire-based company has appointed Grant Thornton to oversee the process.
Outdoor & Cycle Concepts chief executive Greg Nieuwenhuys resigned earlier this month. Jose Ramon Finch joined the board on 1 April as managing director. He said the company is exploring all options. He said: “The future of O&CC is in our hands and it will require hard work, commitment, sacrifices and a strong focus on our day-to-day improvements.”
The company’s acquisition of the Snow+Rock chain was financed with a £40m loan, repayable in 2022. It also has a further £40m of liabilities to its group companies.
O&CC is owned by Retail Concepts NV, a Belgium-based company registered in the Netherlands. It in turn is owned by Dutch outfit AS Adventure Coöpertief UA, which is an asset of French private-equity group PAI Partners.
Cotswold Outdoor began trading in 1974, selling camping equipment. According to the latest published figures, Outdoor & Cycle Concepts employs just over 2,000 people.
Tazalea
28 April 2019It's such a shame that Cotswolds has already lost alo t of good hard working people from all different types of backgrounds. Fat cats greedy only looking out for themselves and not the people who work hard to be paid a pittance and hard working hours........
Tazalea
28 April 2019It's such a shame that Cotswolds has already lost alot of good hard working people from all different types of backgrounds. Fat cats greedy only looking out for themselves and not the people who work hard to be paid a pittance and hard working hours........
George
30 April 2019The failure of Cotswold is down to poor management and bad leadership rather than the downturn in the retail sector. Since the new CEO joined the business in 2016 the majority of the original senior management and directors left the business taking their experience with them. They were replaced by indecisive and seriously incapable people who were unable to produce a clear strategy for the business and act upon it. Moreover huge amounts of cash were wasted on trying to create a culture that was always going to fail due to the bullying nature of the senior leadership team. Another good company that did not need to be in this position of they had listened to staff who had the knowledge to make the company a success. Greed in retail is the biggest challenge to address, staff who want to do the best for a company rather than just fill their pockets are hard to find but easy to ignore.
K Matthews
07 May 2019Former CEO Hans Falkenburg and the Director of Retail Mike Stevens understood Cotswold Outdoor and the market i side out. When they left along with many other experienced managers & staff, the downward spiral of cost cutting, loosing track of the customer and a new, negative culture have all led to this unnecessarily sorry state.
Blaming their problems on the retail sector changes along is masking poor management.
I left in 2014 when the company was still great and was well on board with regards to harnessing online business, so sorry to see what’s happened since.
kevin
08 May 2019They opened a huge store in Newcastle upon Tyne despite the fact just about all of Newcastle's outdoor retailers were either dead or dying. They were never going to shift enough generic outdoor kit to make a store of that size pay. Blacks, Wilderness Ways, Millets, Wild Trak and Nevis Sport had all left the city.