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We’ve just revealed that George Davies’s GIVe has closed its store in Regent Street. It comes as no surprise because everyone knew it has traded really badly and he was trying to offload the lease, but then again most things George has done in his career have gone very right and most people thought he’d succeed with GIVe too.
GIVe launched in a blaze of publicity last year but the problem was it was the wrong sort of publicity, with George being feted in the business pages but not in the womens’ magazines. As someone close to the venture put it to me, the target middle-aged female customer wouldn’t have heard of the brand, but her husband probably had.
It seems to have done OK in concessions in department stores. I saw one of them in Newton Abbot shortly after it launched, and it was one of the more exciting things on the town’s retail scene, which admittedly wasn’t difficult. But its standalone stores are quite drab, almost forbidding, and not the type of places to make a middle-aged, mainstream female shopper feel special.
Another problem was that Regent Street was the wrong location, because it’s not really a destination for that type of shopper, but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t do OK in provincial locations. It just needs to be softened a bit, so the stores actually make the customers feel and look good.
The success of Peter Davies and Liz Houghton’s Mint Velvet - which tomorrow’s Retail Week reveals has managed sales of £10m in its first year - shows there is room in market for new brands to excite the more mature woman who still wants to look good. But the image of affordable luxury and sophistication is different to the rather austere look of Give.
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From Retail Day
Retail Day is a blog about retail by the Retail Week editorial team
Readers' comments (4)
Ian Middleton | 1-Oct-2010 12:20 pm
The proposition isn't really much more than NEXT reloaded in my opinion. Plus that name makes it sound like a charity shop, which coupled with a pretty lacklustre shopfit isn't going to interest the 50-60 something women who were punks and New Romantics 30 years ago.
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Richard Ryan | 1-Oct-2010 1:21 pm
Hi,
What a great (and respectfully destructive) summary, 'he had heard of the brand but his wife probably had not'.
Earned your shiilings there, I think.
I suspect George Davies willl still come out with a solid reputation?
Did you see a piece in The Times in the week on the Jack Wills branding? Pretty petulant and strident, I thought. Good for that brand if it can turn a sale and create employment.
(29.09.10, pp 54, Sathnam Sanghera)
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Graham Soult | 4-Oct-2010 8:35 am
Given that GIVe's concession format (in Beales and other indie department stores) seems to be working better than its standalone shops, I'll be interested in seeing whether it is expanded to Beales' recently acquired stores in Hexham and Rochdale.
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Anonymous | 7-Oct-2010 3:17 pm
GIVe is a great concept and I wish it well, but the execution has been lacklustre. Form what I have seen, some of the clothes are simply terrible (overly fussy and fussy) and stores are uninviting, not a great combination if you want to charge prices very much at the upper end of 'affordable'. Also disappointing was the lack of awareness-creating materials about one of GIVe's big reasons for existance - the support of independent department stores. Small town shoppers are well aware of the gaps appearing in their high streets where department stores used to be, and making it clear that GIVe is there to try and keep them going might at least drive footfall, even if not sales. My mother - one of those small town shoppers - thought it was an imported Italian brand.
If GIVe wants to maintain its price positioning, it needs to sharpen its design credentials (less George at Asda, more Ghost), create more warmth in its stores and make sure that shoppers in the home counties are better aware of its independent positioning.
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