J. Crew Dips Its Toe In The British Market
By Anna Rose Welch, Editorial & Community Director, Advancing RNA
J. Crew takes several more big, but low key, steps abroad
This week, J. Crew enters the British market, but rather than taking the market by storm, the company is keeping the move “low key.” This new store — a men’s only store — is discreetly located in a nineteenth-century building on Lambs Conduit Street, nestled among other men’s clothing and home furnishing outlets. According to the company’s chairman, Mickey Drexler, J. Crew is, “trying not to do the big US company coming to London. We want to be low-key.” This is the first of three planned J. Crew store openings in England, the next of which is a flagship store opening on Regent Street in early November. The company also plans to open a boutique womenswear outlet in Brampton Cross.
This move to the UK is just one of many efforts J. Crew has been making in the past year to expand business overseas. According to an article that appeared in The Wall Street Journal in March 2012, the company was once hesitant to move abroad because it feared overseas business would be a “distraction” from domestic operations. However, chairman Drexler viewed the success of other companies overseas, along with improving J. Crew products and sales, to be a sign that international expansion is an important step for the company. In 2012, the company began testing the waters by allowing online orders to be shipped to 107 new countries — a big step for the company, considering it originally only shipped to two other countries outside of the US — Canada, and Japan. The company continued to add other shipping destinations to boost online sales revenue and to determine areas where demand was highest and could support physical stores, opening branches in various European and Asian capital cities.
Looking at the 2013 second quarter fiscal report, it would seem that these expansions are definitely bringing in revenue. In the second quarter, J. Crew saw a six percent increase in revenue to $559.1 million, up from $525.48 million in 2012’s second quarter. Store sales amounted to $399.1 million for the quarter — an increase of four percent versus 2012’s second quarter — while direct sales increased 13 percent to $151.8 million. J. Crew also reported a net income of $17.5 million for the second quarter and $46.8 million for the first half of the fiscal year.
The first half of the fiscal year also boasted increases in revenue for J. Crew, with total revenue increasing nine percent, reaching $1,123.2 million — an increase from the first half of 2012 when revenue stood at $1,029.01 million. Store sales, totaling $779.3 million also increased six percent versus the first half of last year, while direct sales increased 18 percent, achieving $328.0 million.
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