Asos boss Ramos Calamonte on Topshop’s potential return to the high street and making the brand ‘accessible and exciting’ again

Asos announced today that it had offloaded 75% of the Topshop and Topman brands to Danish fashion giant Bestseller.

Bestseller, which owns more than 20 brands including Jack & Jones and Vero Moda, is Asos’ largest current investor and has around 2,800 retail stores in more than 30 countries internationally.

As part of the joint venture, Bestseller will now own 75% of the Topshop and Topman brands, while Asos retains 22.5% and Nordstrom takes 2.5% as part of its minority interest in the business.

Asos first acquired the Topshop, Topman and other Arcadia-owned brands in February 2021 for £330m. The business is now selling its majority stake in this once ubiquitous, high street retail success story for just £118m a few years later. 

The deal raises questions about how Topshop and Topman have been performing in their own right, and what might be next for the former giants under a new joint venture structure.

With Topshop set to relaunch as its own website and rumours of a return to the physical high street swirling, boss José Antonio Ramos Calamonte set the record straight on a press call this morning.

However, with sales at Topshop recently falling by a further 15%, in line with the group’s broader sales decline, the future for the two brands remains to be seen.

Has Topshop been forgotten?

“People say Topshop is forgotten, but we have spent the last two years really cleansing and putting the brand back in shape. We have been redoing the creative direction of the brand, changing the logos, improving the supply chain and the quality. We have also been improving the relationship with the suppliers and cleansing the distribution of Topshop in certain countries.

“All in all, it has been a journey of putting the brand back in shape for growth and we always knew that this journey was going to have these steps. We were ready to focus, but we got some external unsolicited offers to partner with us and that’s when we saw that this could be an opportunity to accelerate the steps and make the brand more accessible for consumers and more vibrant.

“Clearly, the fact that we have a partner with the expertise of Heartland in opening new channels brings a great opportunity for the brand to grow in areas and channels where we are weaker, so this is clearly one avenue of growth. 

“We are also very excited for the relaunch and giving the brand an opportunity to express what it is and to connect better with consumers. Obviously, the fact that we are gaining flexibility on our balance sheet is giving Asos overall more space to do the right thing, so we are very excited that this is going to certainly become a driving force to push the growth of Topshop and also Asos.”

Could we see Topshop coming back to the high street?

“We have announced this morning the relaunch of Topshop.com, so that will be our first approach. Obviously, we are partnering with a company with extensive expertise and a presence in other channels, including wholesale and physical stores.

“It’s very early to announce there’s going to be physical stores – we will see – but there is no question that Bestseller have a big present presence on the high street. We think that they have a lot of potential.

“We feel we have the right partner in this journey to take the brand wherever it should be to be more accessible and more exciting for consumers.

“We will always explore what is best for Asos and there are no sacred cows. We question everything we do every day, but we are not looking at any specific stores right now.”

Were Asos’ partners briefed about the sale?

“We see this transaction as a complete win-win for us. We are still a part of Topshop, we are a critical part on the creative side, on the design side, on the buying side and certainly on the online sales, and we are part of defining the future of Topshop on the distribution in our core markets.

“The way we see it is that we are super-excited about this transaction because we think it hits the right balance for Asos from quite a few points of view. It is giving us the right platform after all the work we’ve done over the past few years to put the brand in the right place and now accelerate growth.

“We are true believers in the value of Topshop and Topman as two iconic British brands and being able to be part of the future of it was of great value for us. I don’t only mean that from an emotional point of view, but from an economic point of view as well. This will create more value for Asos, shareholders and its customers.” 

Will Topshop have a separate website?

“We are going to be running two websites. The reason why we want to relaunch Topshop.com is because we think it is a fantastic platform for the brand to be expressed as what it is in itself.

“We still see a lot of traffic that is bouncing from Topshop.com to our Asos site, so there is interest out there and this is not going to be something exclusive for Topshop. We sell on our platform approximately 900 brands, and the majority of them have their own site, so Topshop is going to be just like one of those other brands.”

What’s the problem at Asos?

”We always said from the beginning of the year that fiscal year 2024 was a year still of transformation, where we really wanted to make sure our operations were sustainably profitable. Obviously, that has caused us to make some choices, but we are totally fine with those choices because we are convinced they were the right ones.

“I think the fact that the profitability is coming in at the top end of the range is clearly supporting that. We really want to make sure that our relationship with consumers is based on a healthy excitement around full-price sales rather than promotions.

“All those changes have had an impact but we see with a lot of optimism that those changes are generating the right output.”