When it opened its main London outlet on Oxford Street in central London in 2017, Reserved hinted that further expansion plans would follow.
Six years on, the Polish fast-fashion retailer is about to turn those suggestions into something more concrete.
The flagship brand of LLP, the Polish clothing group, is gearing up to open several new shops in London — and a further 400 stores throughout Europe — by the end of the year.
Reserved, which sells women’s, men’s and children’s apparel, will open stores in the Westfield Stratford and Brent Cross shopping centres in the capital. It is also in talks about sites in cities including Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Newcastle.
“We have lots of experience from our store on Oxford Street and believe that . . . we can fill the gap in the market right now, especially while many other companies are closing their stores,” Przemyslaw Lutkiewicz, chief financial officer at LLP, said. “We hope we can fill that Topshop-shaped hole on the high street.”
Reserved, founded in 1999, is part of the Warsaw-listed LLP Group, which claims to be the biggest clothing manufacturer in central and eastern Europe. LLP has almost 2,000 stores worldwide, including more than 460 under the Reserved fascia in 40 markets.
Reserved, which promoted Kate Moss, the model, as the face of the brand, opened its first shop on Oxford Street in the former BHS store and said then that it was looking for more sites. Little happened, however, until last year it appointed Dan Hildyard, a retail property consultant, to advise on further store openings in Britain. The retailer has already revealed that it will open another store at 70/88 Oxford Street, its second location in the UK, this year.
Lutkiewicz, 52, said Reserved’s plans had been pushed back because of the pandemic and rising costs since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the latter factor had now spurred the business on to push into more western markets. He argued that it was “quite easy” to enter the British market right now: “Many big retailers have had to scale back their businesses,” he said. “There have been lots of nice properties, lots of nice locations to take over right now.”
He said that though the British economy was struggling, it would start to grow soon. “The market is so big for us that even having a small portion of it will be beneficial for our company,” he said.
