Cotton Merchants’ 3% rise in working revenue marks a return to development following a 9.9% decline in 2023.
The retailer attributed the rise to new buyer acquisition from launching on Debenhams Group and Freemans Group on-line marketplaces in 2024, adopted by Matalan in January 2025.
EBITDA elevated 4% 12 months on 12 months to £11.94m as the ladies’s and males’s informal clothes model enterprise skilled “an actual resurgence” in its 89 shops throughout the UK, stated Cotton Merchants CEO Nick Hamblin.
Cotton Merchants’ omnichannel providing, which incorporates an “order in-store” programme that grew 1.9% 12 months on 12 months by income, is “stronger than ever, (…) growing [Cotton Traders’] gross sales throughout bricks and mortar”, he added.
Turnover continued to fall in 2024, albeit at a slower price, because the enterprise reported gross sales of £107.9m – down 1% 12 months on 12 months.
The decline in gross sales was attributed to a pause in tv promoting amid a “turbulent financial local weather in 2024”.
Cotton Merchants has since returned to TV promoting with a six-week “Stuffed with Surprises” advertising and marketing marketing campaign within the first half of 2025.
The pause allowed the retailer to “reassess and revisit [its] model persona”, stated Cotton Merchants chief advertising and marketing officer Shona Jameson.
“Our ‘Stuffed with Surprises’ model marketing campaign addressed model and viewers misconceptions head on in a memorable, humorous manner that talks on to our audience; difficult them to reassess what they thought they knew about Cotton Merchants,” she added.
“We’re inspired by the model’s enhance in working income all through 2024, most notably pushed by means of an incremental enhance in on-line and in-store gross sales, mixed with clients being pushed to the model by means of efficiently implementing our market development technique – all within the face of a turbulent financial interval,” stated Hamblin.
