Fashion retailer Mosaic Brands is closing more than five of its major store brands.
Mosaic will close the Rockmans, Autograph, Crossroads, W.Lane and BeMe brands, including stores and websites, CEO Erica Berchtold confirmed.
It reportedly employs 4,000 people and has approximately 700 stores across Australia.
“Mosaic will eliminate five brands that have become marginal and non-core, allowing us to focus on five core growing brands,” he said.
“Each of those major brands will have a clearly differentiated market proposition, target customer, price point and product range.”
The group will now focus on the Millers, Noni B, Rivers and Katies brands.
“While the operational details of the rationalization plan continue to be worked out, including store closures, we will seek to minimize the impact on our team, including, where possible, reassigning affected team members to roles within the five core brands.” Berchtold said.
Fashion retailer Mosaic Brands is closing more than five major retail brands.
‘Our Focus on Core is a growth-driven strategy to retain existing customers and attract new ones. A key element of this strategy is that Mosaic will continue to focus on serving regional Australia.”
Professor Gary Mortimer, a retail expert at the Queensland University of Technology Business School, said Mosaic Brands made the mistake of “essentially creating multiple brands to market to exactly the same audience: middle-aged and middle-class women.” .
“All these women shop in the same stores, so you’re cannibalizing your own market,” Professor Mortimer told news.com.au.
“If you walk into a shopping center, you will find at least two, if not three, of those brands competing for the same customer and that simply doubles and triples the cost of doing business.”
Professor Mortimer compared the approach to the problem faced by Kmart and Target several years ago when competing with two other discounters owned by Wesfarmers.