Frasers Group Plc warned Hugo Boss AG that it will vote against any dividends, as the British retailer owned by billionaire Mike Ashley exerts its influence after years of building a stake in the German fashion house.
Mike Ashley – Photographer: Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
Hugo Boss’s management should prioritize funding long-term growth and financial flexibility over paying out dividends, Frasers said in a statement late Thursday. It also said the company’s stock is undervalued, and called on Hugo Boss to redeem all its treasury shares.
Shares of Hugo Boss rose as much as 4.2% in morning trading on Friday, with trading volume about 18 times the average for the time of day.
The company, founded by Mike Ashley and formerly known as Sports Direct, is known for acquiring significant stakes in other retailers and using its position to influence board-level decisions. That strategy now appears to extend to Hugo Boss, just weeks after Frasers Chief Executive Officer Michael Murray joined the brand’s supervisory board.
Frasers and Hugo Boss have had a long relationship that includes the British retailer selling the fashion brand’s stock across its stores and online. Ashley’s company holds 25% of voting rights in Hugo Boss, according to a filing last month, with exposure to a further 32% through the sale of put options.
Frasers said it will support Hugo Boss Chief Executive Officer Daniel Grieder and Stephan Sturm, chairman of its supervisory board, in growing the fashion brand. It also said it does not rule out increasing its stake in the company over the next year, subject to market conditions.
In its response, Hugo Boss said it maintains an active and constructive dialog with all shareholders, and appreciates the engagement with Frasers. The company will outline a new strategy at a capital markets day in the fourth quarter, including an evaluation of how capital is allocated to keep aligning the company’s long-term goals with shareholder interests.
Hugo Boss also said that while it has not seen any downside in keeping 1.4 million treasury shares acquired between 2004 and 2007, it is now considering redeeming them as Frasers requested.
Frasers has a history of high-profile clashes with companies in which it held stakes, including with department stores Debenhams and House of Fraser. The business is now run by Murray, Ashley’s son-in-law, and has expanded its premium offering with upmarket outlet Flannels.
Last year, Frasers walked away from an attempted takeover of British handbag maker Mulberry Group Plc but still pushed for a board seat.
Artificial intelligence (AI) continues its march to transform businesses’/consumers’ lives with customer advocacy platform Mention Me launching ‘AI Discovery IQ’, a free-to-use tool that “helps brands reach target consumers in the new age of generative AI search”.
Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP/Archives
It claims to allow brands to “instantly audit how discoverable they are within popular AI systems” such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity.
According to Mention Me, 62% of UK consumers now turn to generative AI tools for product recommendations, brand discovery and comparisons, “bypassing traditional search engines entirely [so] businesses are under pressure to respond to this behaviour change,” said the platform’s CEO Wojtek Kokoszka whose platform works with firms including Charlotte Tilbury, Huel and Puma, “helping marketing teams to boost consumer awareness and sales”.
With AI, it says the modern customer journey, powered by natural language prompts instead of outdated keyword strings, means consumers are 4.4 times more likely to convert if they find a brand through a large language model (LLM).
“The rise of ‘agent-mode’ assistants and AI-driven voice search has pushed brands into a new world of digital visibility. Despite this, most brands have little to no insight into how they appear in AI-generated answers”, said Kokoszka.
AI Discoverability IQ claims to give brands an overall LLM discoverability score, specific details on areas such as technical website elements, content and structured data, and actionable recommendations to improve their AI discoverability.
Its tool generates “measurable, trackable outputs” like AI Visibility Score, brands’ prompt-based results, and a side-by-side comparisons with their competitive set. This means brands “can react quickly to improve their discoverability scores” with Mention Me’s wider suite of products and unique first-party data.
It’s also “innovating and evolving” its platform to include more capabilities, such as the ability to benchmark against competitors, to drive further improvements for marketing leaders in the age of AI.
Mention Me CMO Neha Mantri said: “AI Discoverability is not yet a named practice within most marketing teams; the same way SEO wasn’t in the early 2000s. But when up to 31% of consumers say they’re more likely to trust responses from generative AI than traditional search results, this needs to change. Mention Me is naming the problem and providing a solution at just the right time.”
A host of celebrities and high-end brands have donating goods to ensure Savile Row’s latest annual ‘Pop-Up Crisis’ store will continue to support the Crisis charity event that has so far raised over £650,000 since 2018.
Image: Crisis charity
Across 8-13 December, the pop-up store at 18-19 Savile Row in London’s Mayfair will sell a curated selection of designer clothing, past stock and samples from luxury brands.
Celebs donating goods include Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Naomie Harris, David Gandy, Jarvis Cocker, Louis Partridge, Jamie Redknapp and Emma Corrin, among others, for a week-long event and raffle with all proceeds going to help end homelessness across Britain.
Hosted by landlord The Pollen Estate, the temporary shop is also selling designer goods donated by Savile Row tailors including Mr Porter, Wales Bonner, Crockett & Jones and many other luxury brands from Barbour, Tod’s to Manolo Blahnik and Watches of Switzerland Group.
This year, celebrity model and fashion entrepreneur David Gandy will also be curating an exclusive online edit on shopfromcrisis.com, including donations from his own wardrobe as well as items from friends including Redknapp’s brand Sandbanks, Hackett and Aspinal of London.
Gandy said: “Having supported Crisis for a number of years, I’m delighted to have had the opportunity to curate my own online edit this year with the help of some of my close friends. It means a lot to know that donations from my own wardrobe are going towards such an important cause. Whether you’re looking for the perfect Christmas gift or to treat yourself, your purchase can help make a real difference to people facing homelessness this Christmas.”
Liz Choonara, executive director of Commerce and Enterprise at Crisis, added: “Pop-Up Crisis is such an iconic event in the Crisis calendar and one that we look forward to every year. We’re thrilled to be partnering with the team once again for another week celebrating the iconic craftsmanship and style of Savile Row – with all proceeds going towards our crucial work to end homelessness.”
Specialist outdoor clothing producer Dryrobe has won a trademark case against a smaller label. The win for the business, which produces waterproof towel-lined robes used by cold water swimmers, means the offending rival must now stop selling items under the D-Robe brand within a week.
Image: Dryrobe
A judge at the high court in London ruled the company was guilty of passing off its D-Robe changing robes and other goods as Dryrobe products and knew it was infringing its bigger rival’s trademark reports, The Guardian newspaper.
The company said it has rigorously defended its brand against being used generically by publications and makers of similar clothing and is expected to seek compensation from D-Robe’s owners for trademark infringement.
Dryrobe was created by the former financier Gideon Bright as an outdoor changing robe for surfers in 2010 and became the signature brand of the wild swimming craze.
Sales increased from £1.3 million in 2017 to £20.3 million in 2021 and it made profits of £8 million. However, by 2023 sales had fallen back to £18 million as the passion for outdoor sports waned and the brand faced more competition.
Bright told the newspaper the legal win was a “great result” for Dryrobe as there were “quite a lot of copycat products and [the owners] immediately try to refer to them using our brand name”.
He said the company was now expanding overseas and moving into a broader range of products, adding that sales were similar to 2023 as “a lot of competition has come in”.