Under a social media heading ‘We’re Back!’, shirtmaker and menswear retailer TM Lewin announced its return to physical retail after an absence of five years.

The retailer has opened a flagship store on Bow Lane in the City of London, the area where it excelled pre-pandemic with its offer appealing to the area’s corporate/finance workers.

The brand took to Instagram to say: “We cannot wait to welcome you to our first retail store after a challenging five years. We believe the saying goes ‘nothing that comes easy is worth having’ so here’s to that. Thank you for your patience, loyalty and kindness throughout, and roll the next chapter. The best is yet to come…”

The upbeat message comes after that “challenging” half-decade that had seen the retailer enter administration twice after struggling to make a positive return post-pandemic.

In 2020 the business was bought by SCP Private Equity, resulting in it cutting 600 staff and closing 66 UK stores.

The retailer collapsed into administration for the second time in 2022 and was followed by a rescue deal that April when it was sold to TM Lewin Shirtmaker Limited, a company owned by its main lender Petra Group, to become a purely digital retailer.

In February, it was announced that following the second administration, the then-failed business saw its debt load rise to almost £10 million while owing unsecured creditors over £30 million.

It’s turning out to be a very busy spring on the tech front for The Very Group. Fresh from unveiling a new Beauty Inspiration Hub for its signature brand, the digital fashion retailer has now turned to expanding its data-led creative expertise by launching HelloStudio for other businesses.

Targeting external brands, the new proposition “will provide a multi-channel creative service which taps into the latest technology, offering bespoke and tailored content that connects brands to their consumers”.

And  “a rich history of delivering creative campaigns to captivate audiences, including those for global brands” will be at the heart of the HelloStudio offer.

Leveraging The Very Group’s 1.4 million daily site visits, 4.3 million active customers and tech capabilities, HelloStudio “will utilise the retailer’s wealth of customer data throughout the ‘ideation’ process to collaborate with brand partners on new concepts”, it said. 

The launch of the new creative solution follows the roll-out of Very Media Group, which combines the internal retail and data expertise of The Very Group and the retail media knowledge of its in-house SMG team.

The HelloStudio team’s experience spans big household names across diverse categories, from Adidas and Apple, to Levi’s, Ray-Ban, Meta and SharkNinja, “helping deliver material increases in key measures such as sales, return on ad spend and social conversions”.

Julie Phelan, head of Creative at The Very Group said: “We’ve been working with brands, delivering eye-catching creative campaigns for years now, so while the proposition is new, working with brands has been at the heart of The Very Group for a long time.

“We have a proven record of conceptualising and delivering channel bespoke content which customers love. There is no channel after thought or retrofitting in our work. Plus, we harness and embrace new technology to enhance our rich content.”

Mass-market fashion retailer New Look has announced that it will “supercharge digital growth” on the back of a £30 million investment from its shareholders.

The money will be spent on its data, AI and e-commerce platforms “to enhance [the] seamless, personalised shopping experience for its 10 million customers” and it aims to double digital orders from £500 million to £1 billion by 2030, targeting a 10% online market share by FY28

The company, which is already one of the UK’s biggest names in UK womenswear for the 18-44 age range, said the “opportunity is clear. The UK has an online womenswear market of £4.3 billion. New Look already has market-leading positions in several key categories1: #1 in dresses, #1 in outerwear, #1 in footwear and #1 in denim, and over 10 million engaged customers”.

It’s understandable that the business wants to leverage this into a much bigger digital business, although it must be said that it hasn’t exactly neglected the online market thus far.

Over the past five years it has invested “significantly” to elevate its digital capabilities, upgrading its website and app, building a social media community of 7 million followers, and creating a proprietary Enterprise Data Platform with a leading tech stack. 

Using data and AI it said it will be able to provide its customers with “hyper-personalised marketing and a tailored shopping experience, leading to higher satisfaction and lower return rates”.

So there’s obviously more to do and the new investment should take it to the next stage. The funding will be strategically deployed across four key growth areas.

The first is data-driven innovation – enhancing insights, decision-making, and customer personalisation; expanding the proprietary Enterprise Data Platform to deliver even more hyper-personalised shopping experiences; and leveraging real-time analytics to improve supply chain speed and efficiency, and anticipate customer trends. 

Next is technology investments such as optimising the app and online shopping journey; improving search and product discovery to make it easier for customers to find what they want; and streamlining the checkout experience, improving the customer journey and driving sales growth.  

The third growth area is loyalty and engagement – “cementing New Look’s market dominance and fashion authority”. It aims to achieve this by leveraging its “strong brand and sustainability credentials, using AI-driven insights to refine product development” to create collections that are “trend-led, great value and [with] high-quality design”. It also aims to consistently deliver in its best-selling categories to reinforce its market-leading position; and introduce new digital initiatives for its loyalty programme, Club New Look, to offer members exclusive rewards, products and promotions to enhance engagement and loyalty.  

The final growth area is ‘customer migration’, streamlining and elevating the customer journey. It also includes optimising the store network to underpin digital initiatives in selected retail locations, strengthening in-store digital engagement; and drawing on learnings from recent upgrades to flagship stores in Manchester and Bluewater “where digital enhancements have delivered double digit like-for-like sales growth”.

CEO Helen Connolly said: “Our goal is to be the number one online destination for feel-good fashion, powered by our loyal customer base and proven digital model. This new capital injection means we can ramp up our digital operations, enhance customer service, and drive growth and achieve our goal of £1bn online demand by 2030.”