The chief executive of Ann Summers has admitted the business had “gone a bit vanilla” and lost its edge, as the retailer looks to return to its roots in 2025.
In an exclusive interview with Retail Week, Ann Summers chief executive Maria Hollins and chair Vanessa Gold said the lingerie and sex toy retailer suffered a “tough year” in 2024, against a backdrop of high inflation and the cost-of-living crisis.
The pair said the business had scored some “own goals”, including mellowing out its brand identity to make it more appealing to the masses and improve its visibility on search engines.
Hollins told Retail Week: “We did customer research to just check in on are we still relevant? Who is our customer? Has that moved on? And what we found was that it hadn’t moved very much.
“I think we came to the realisation that we had gone a bit vanilla, a bit mainstream, and had lost that edge. We have always been about sexual pleasure and we had dumbed that down to try and feed Meta and Google. What we realised is: why bother? Because we’ve still got the same issues, so we may as well be what we really stand for.”
Ann Summers hit a period of financial difficulty last year, laying off employees across the business to cut costs and shore up its balance sheet. The result was an EBITDA loss of £5.6m as well as a fall in turnover from £104.5m to £93m for the 52 weeks to June 29, 2024.
Hollins said: “I think generally, we’ve done the really tough part. We’ve taken that pain and actually feel in a much stronger position going forward.”
The pair said the brand was making a bid to return to its original purpose of “providing pleasure” and it had reached peak expectations ahead of this year’s Valentine’s Day as well as over the Christmas trading period.
Bestsellers over Christmas included the Hero, Stardom and Enticement lingerie collections, all featured in Love Island star and brand ambassador Molly Smith’s campaign, as well as the self-love wand, moregasm plus bullet and rampant rabbit sex toys.
Ann Summers also noted the success of its expansion into perfume, with a “pheromone-infused” scent a breakout star of the launch.
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