International retail giant Otto Group is soliciting buyer interest in its Freemans online business, Retail Week can reveal.
Otto is understood to have recently circulated an information memorandum for Freemans, and the deadline for initial expressions of interest was this weekend (Friday January 16). FRP is said to have been engaged to run the process.
A range of potential buyers have cast their slide rules over Freemans, which was acquired by Otto in 1999 for £150m from retail conglomerate Sears, shortly after the latter’s purchase by tycoon Sir Philip Green – a deal which set the stage for Green’s subsequent rise to dominance in UK retail.
Parties potentially interested in buying Freemans range from private equity to trade. One industry source believed that Debenhams Group and Frasers Group were among those to have looked at Freemans. If so, any contest would pitch the pair against each other once more, following longstanding animosity.
Freemans was founded in 1905, when it sold suits on credit from a terraced house in Clapham. Over the subsequent decades, it grew into one of the biggest mail-order retailers and then focused on online as ecommerce took off.
Freemans, for which singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor has appeared in advertising and launched a fashion capsule edit, is thought, like many fashion retailers, to have suffered amid tough trading conditions. However, in its most recent trading update, covering the 25 weeks to the end of June 2025, sales on Freemans.com were up 12%.
It is thought that Otto Group would prefer to focus on its other businesses, which include Crate & Barrel and Bonprix.
An Otto spokesperson said the retailer does not comment on “market rumours”. FRP declined to comment, as did Debenhams. Frasers Group was not immediately contactable.
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