Source: The Drum
The fiscal year started off well for fashion house Ralph Lauren, who seems to have beat analyst expectations for the first fiscal quarter. With sales amounting to $1.7 billion, a three percent increase from the year prior. However, when looking at profits, a drop of 10 percent was seen; executives at Ralph Lauren state this is due to all the expansion efforts from the brand.
There are a number of brands in the Ralph Lauren fashion house, namely; Ralph Lauren Collection, Polo, Black Label, Purple Label, Blue label and so forth; and to add to the family of brands the company will be launching Polo for women later in August. Come August 28, Ralph Lauren will see the opening of its first Polo flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New Work, with plans of opening stores in East Hampton and New Jersey.
To keep up with the trend that other brands’ have set in investing within the market in China, Ralph Lauren will open its first 20,000 square foot flagship store in Hong Kong this fall.
In terms of Ralph Lauren’s global markets, the business received a double digit increase in revenue for the quarter, with an overall rise in sales of three percent. The e-commerce channel was fairly strong, with online sales for the U.S. developed gradually, indicating that margins were at or above the other divisions of the Stateside business.
An executive from Ralph Lauren said that; “In the U.S., if a customer moves from brick and mortar to e-commerce, it’s good for us from a profitability standpoint.”
E-commerce business is still growing in Europe, with this year being the company’s first year that it moves from “investment mode”; that is starting operations up and running, to now profitability, which is bound to see a significant increase as the year progresses.
