Ted Baker posted profits up 10.4% to £9.4m, slightly ahead of analysts’ forecasts of £9.1m in its first half. Retail Week spoke to founder and chief executive Ray Kelvin on how Ted Baker achieves consistent good growth and its international expansion plans.

Ted Baker has posted consistent growth over the past year, why have you done so well?

It is down to great products and design. It’s all about having a focus on products and doing the basics well. The company has a well organised structure and we’ve never had any financial issues.

In saying that, we have opened a lot of new space and the stores are doing well.

Trading in the US is up 53.3% to $25.6m and you opened a new store on Fifth Avenue in the period – what are your plans there?

We will be opening more concessions. There are great prospects there and the collection is selling very well. We will open one or two more standalone stores but we don’t want to dominate in any particular market. There is a lotto do in a lot of countries as we can see in the multichannel route to market where wholesale is selling to and there has been a surge in product licensing.

You opened stores in Tokyo and the first in Beijing in China recently, where else do you want to open stores?

We want more stores in prominent markets. We want to open more stores in Asia. We are also looking at Latin America. We want to be a global business.

The Shanghai store opens soon and Canada store also opens. We’ve had fantastic uptake from the Canadians in New York. We’ve very excited about the stores.

It gives me an excuse to visit Canada to go fishing.

Sales at the online business are soared 82.4% to £6.2m in the period what are your plans for the future?

We will be relaunching the website next year after the new platform is bedded in. It is a more robust system and we’re designing it as we speak.

How do you forecast Christmas trading will be this year?

I think it will be a little bit better than last year. Ted Baker does very well at Christmas because we have a strong gifting offer. I think it will be good for us.

Retail Week and the BRC are running a campaign to reduce the business rate burden on retailers to achieve Fair Rates for Retail – what is your opinion of the impact of business rates?

I’m not a big campaigner because I’m very shy. But I think the less cost we have to pay then the more goes into the till [and the more we can invest]. We all have a social responsibility to help the country out of a tight spot but measures such as business rates have to be in-line and affordable.

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