Claire’s expected to return to UK high streets with about 50 stores from June
The jewellery and accessories chain Claire’s is expected to return to UK high streets with about 50 stores to be reopened from June onwards by the operator of its shops in France, Austria, Portugal and Spain.Julien Jarjoura, the French entrepreneur behind jewellery company Une Ligne, which sells online and via museum stores including the Louvre and the Palace of Versailles, said he had the blessing of the US owner of the Claire’s brand, Ames Watson, to open stores in the UK and was signing new leases with UK landlords.The plans emerged just days after the chain closed its final UK stores with the loss of more than 1,000 jobs and ending three decades on British high streets.“I feel so sad when I see such a nice business going down,” Jarjoura told the Guardian.“The brand was basically dead and we’re bringing it back to life.
”Jarjoura, who first tried to buy Claire’s in January, said he was aiming to reopen four to 10 stores a week in the UK from June.“A lot of people think Claire’s is a British brand.It is extremely famous in the UK and there is no way it is going away,” he said.He said the brand had suffered from a lack of investment in stores and products that were not right for the UK and had become too expensive, so it had become reliant on heavy discounting.He plans to revamp stores, continue with ear-piercing services and introduce new jewellery and accessories which will start from £1.
90 in price but could run to more than £100.“There will definitely be some brand repositioning,” he said.“We are not a discount store but we like to sell stuff at a fair price.”He admitted the Claire’s brand had been damaged in the UK and it would “take a bit of time to bring back the customers”, especially those who had become used to heavy discounting such as “buy three get four” offers.Jarjoura, who is already running about 240 Claire’s stores across Europe, said he had hired some of Claire’s former executives in the UK and expected to keep open some of its 356 concessions in the UK but had not taken on its head office in Birmingham or bought old stock from the administrators, Kroll.
He said the UK business would be debt-free as he was funding it himself and did not expect it to immediately make a profit.“We need to invest in the business,” he said.“We are not unrealistic in terms of getting benefits from this company for three to five years.”Jarjoura said he was not put off by retail industry concerns about business rates and employment costs in the UK.“Nothing is easy but you can’t always be blaming someone else for your own faults,” he said.
Founded in 1961 in Chicago, Claire’s arrived in the UK in 1996 through the acquisition of accessories chain Bow Jangles.It became a well-loved staple of UK high streets which was particularly popular with teenagers and tweens, but it has recently struggled amid heavy competition and a lack of investment.The UK arm’s difficulties increased in August last year after Claire’s in the US and Canada filed for bankruptcy for the second time in seven years.Ames Watson has been approached for comment.
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Maryland becomes first state to ban surveillance pricing in grocery stores
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Tech giants’ results show rosy outlook for AI boom and US stock market
Unusual simultaneous reports of financial results by several of the US’s largest tech companies gave positive indications for the stock market despite widespread fears of an AI bubble on Wednesday.Four of the so-called Magnificent Seven tech stocks, the most valuable publicly traded companies in the world, reported their quarterly financial results on Wednesday. The cluster is not typical, as these disclosures do not often occur on the same day, and provides a snapshot of how the tech industry is faring as it rides the AI boom. Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft all revealed double-digit gains in their cloud computing units, which have seen supercharged growth thanks to increasing adoption of AI. Meta, not in the business of cloud computing, failed to meet Wall Street expectations
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