Hugo Boss AG announced plans to eliminate two brands and slow down expansion of its store network, as chief executive officer Mark Langer resets the ailing German fashion house’s strategy six months into the job.
The company will only produce clothes under the Hugo and Boss brands, narrowing its focus to casualwear and business clothes, the Metzingen-based suitmaker said in a statement yesterday.
Hugo Boss said that next year would be a transition year and it expects a return to growth in 2018.
The company reiterated a forecast of cost savings of 65 million euros (US$61 million) this year.
The statement was “a bit light on numbers in terms of potential cost savings,” MainFirst Bank analyst John Guy wrote, adding that analysts might cut their earnings estimates for next year.
Langer needs to jump-start Hugo Boss, which ousted its longtime chief executive in May and whose shares have lost about a third of their value in the past year.
He has taken a strategy akin to Burberry Group PLC and Marks & Spencer Group PLC, which have been weeding out smaller brands amid weak consumption in Europe.
Langer has signaled that Hugo Boss will turn away from the luxury market in favor of making more affordable clothing.
The Boss Orange and Boss Green brands will be folded into the Boss brand, the company said.
Hugo’s entry-level prices are to be about 30 percent lower than Boss clothing, while Hugo Boss would expand its online business.
Womenswear is to become a lower priority.
Boss would not show a new womenswear line at fashion shows in New York next year, a break with an emphasis on that segment by Langer’s predecessor, Claus-Dietrich Lahrs, now head of the Bottega Veneta luxury brand.
Boss is also upping the assortment of casual clothes and shoes in its stores, getting in line with a trend that has seen men and women pair sneakers and other dress-down essentials with more polished outfits.
PERSISTENT RUMORS: Nvidia’s CEO said the firm is not in talks to sell AI chips to China, but he would welcome a change in US policy barring the activity Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said his company is not in discussions to sell its Blackwell artificial intelligence (AI) chips to Chinese firms, waving off speculation it is trying to engineer a return to the world’s largest semiconductor market. Huang, who arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of meetings with longtime partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), took the opportunity to clarify recent comments about the US-China AI race. The Nvidia head caused a stir in an interview this week with the Financial Times, in which he was quoted as saying “China will win” the AI race. Huang yesterday said
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
The Chinese government has issued guidance requiring new data center projects that have received any state funds to only use domestically made artificial intelligence (AI) chips, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. In recent weeks, Chinese regulatory authorities have ordered such data centers that are less than 30 percent complete to remove all installed foreign chips, or cancel plans to purchase them, while projects in a more advanced stage would be decided on a case-by-case basis, the sources said. The move could represent one of China’s most aggressive steps yet to eliminate foreign technology from its critical infrastructure amid a
MORE WEIGHT: The national weighting was raised in one index while holding steady in two others, while several companies rose or fell in prominence MSCI Inc, a global index provider, has raised Taiwan’s weighting in one of its major indices and left the country’s weighting unchanged in two other indices after a regular index review. In a statement released on Thursday, MSCI said it has upgraded Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country World Index by 0.02 percentage points to 2.25 percent, while maintaining the weighting in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, the most closely watched by foreign institutional investors, at 20.46 percent. Additionally, the index provider has left Taiwan’s weighting in the MSCI All-Country Asia ex-Japan Index unchanged at 23.15 percent. The latest index adjustments are to
RSS