Today Ted Baker revealed the UK had generated particularly good sales in its third quarter, driving its 24.6% uplift in retail sales, while the US business was impacted by Hurricane Sandy. Chief executive Ray Kelvin outlines how the business continues to deliver.

Retail Week: Have retail sales exceeded expectations?

Ray Kelvin: Depends on the territory. The UK has been very very strong and Europe has been very good, while the US has been hit by storms and elections and people are having trouble getting petrol. But because we’ve got the spread across the world we can take the good with the bad and the bad with the good but there’s one thing you don’t get, and that’s the ugly.

How badly was Ted Baker impacted by Hurricane Sandy, which hit the US a fortnight ago?

We couldn’t open our stores in New York, and we didn’t have any light or electricity for a while so trading was disrupted there and across our concessions in the city.

It has been a tough time and trading is still not completely back to normal because people are still having trouble getting hold of petrol to travel to stores

Why has the UK performed particularly well?

I put it down to the collections and the product. Menswear has performed really well and our ‘phormalwear not normalwear’ has traded brilliantly. My own collection called Tight Lines because of my love of fly fishing has also been very successful.

Womenswear has been good across all areas.

But now we have Christmas. We can’t worry about the things that are out of our control, such as the weather and storms. We can only continue to do our best.

Our new German concessions are doing brilliantly. In fact we’re doing brilliantly in all the top department stores we’re in. They hail us as the number one brand in our category in all the deparment stores, including our new space in Bloomingdales.

Sales in Bloomingdales have exceeded expectations.

The Canadian store opens today, what does Ted Baker have in store for us?

Canada will be a good market for us. The store is designed about maple syrup, mounted police and the rocky mountains. We have moving mountain scenes playing in store and we have Canadian mounted police opening the store today.

Ted Baker plans to open more overseas stores in Shanghai and Kuwait next year, what other countries are you planning on opening in?

We are opening two more stores in Shangahi next year and we now feel that we have enough bases to build on and grow in those territories where we are already. We don’t want to be dominant in any one area.

How is online trading?

Online is doing very well indeed. We have heavily invested in ecommerce and we have a new platform and a beautiful team structure.

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