La Senza to sell Canadian clothing chain
Lingerie chain leaves behind Suzy Shier
June 15 2003
Lingerie retailer La Senza is selling the Suzy Shier clothing chain from which it developed, as it focuses on entering the US market.
The Canadian-based retailer is selling its 178 Suzy Shier women’s clothing stores to a member of the YM retail group, which operates clothing chains including Stitches, Sirens and Urban Planet.
The sale price was not announced but La Senza recently estimated the chain’s value at about US$15m. The company traded as Suzy Shier prior to developing the La Senza brand.
Chairman and chief executive Irving Teitelbaum, said: “We are closing an important chapter in our history, not without regret, particularly in respect to all of the employees of Suzy Shier who rendered many years of loyal and devoted service. As I have expressed many times, our future lies in leveraging the power of the La Senza brand, particularly in lingerie retailing. We look forward to it’s continued Canadian expansion, as well as to further licensing of La Senza concepts around the world.”
La Senza has already written down the Suzy Shier division down as discontinued operations. The buyer has indicated that it intends to operate Suzy Shier in its present format, with minimum job losses expected.
Teitelbaum said: “We will also now be free to focus all of our resources and energies on our next venture, the test marketing of our La Senza Lingerie stores in five major regional malls in the Northeast United States.”
The Montreal-based company has more than 200 stores in Canada, with another 80 in the UK and Middle East.
