A MYSTERY business is set to save up to 48 Select Fashion stores, Flying Eze can reveal.
It comes just days after Flying Eze revealedthe struggling high street fashion brand is on the edge of going bust, drafting in advisers from Moorfields to oversee a liquidation of the business.
Select operates around 83 stores across the UK, with 35 shut down earlier this month.
The remaining 48 stores are set to close on Friday March 28.
But new documents can reveal that Essence Fashion Limited has entered into a licence trade agreement with Select Fashion.
A directors report, seen by Flying Eze, details how the troubled company entered into a licence to trade with Essence on 28 February 2025.
It read: “The licence grants Essence permission to operate and maintain the Company's business for a period of six months and an option to acquire the goodwill and assets of the Company based on the open market valuation of the assets.”
This means the business has permission to use Select Fashion name and other assets, such as property.
Little is known about the firm but filings on Companies House show the firm was created back in February 2024.
Select and Essence also have the same director and shareholder, Emre Gonc.
Flying Eze has approached Moorfields and Select Fashion.
It could mean hundreds of jobs are saved as the 48 stores could remain open and trading as normal.
At its peak, the chain which has been on the high street for nearly four decades, had a total of 169 stores.
Select Fashionhad been quietly slashing its store estate since January, with a number of the nearly-three dozen stores marked for closure having already shut.
This is also not the first time the Select Fashion brand has changed hands.
Select fell into administration in 2019, but was later bought out of administration by Genus UK Limited.
The firm is owned by Turkish entrepreneur Cafer MahiroÄŸlu.
TROUBLE ON THE HIGH STREET
Soaring inflation in recent years has also dented shoppers' pockets.
The Centre for Retail Research's latest analysis suggests 13,479 stores, the equivalent of 37 each day, shut for good in 2024.
Of those, 11,341 were independent shops while 2,138 were shut by larger retailers.
The data also showed over half the stores that closed last year were shut due to the store or retailer going through insolvency proceedings.
This is when formal measures are taken to deal with tackling a business‘s debt.
Retailers are also shutting stores in 2025.
New Look is ramping up a store closure programme ahead of April's National Insurance hike.
Approximately a quarter of the retailer's 364 stores are at risk when their leases expire.
This equates to about 91 stores, with a significant impact on its 8,000-strong workforce.
The company has restructured its store estate twice in the past six years, reducing its portfolio from around 600 UK stores in 2018.
It also closed all of its 26 stores across Ireland, marking the end of a two decade tenure in the country.
RETAIL PAIN IN 2025
The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury's hike to employer NICs will cost the retail sector £2.3billion.
Research by the British Chambers of Commerce shows that more than halfofcompanies plan to raise prices by early April.
A survey of more than 4,800 firms found that 55% expect prices to increase in the next three months, up from 39% in a similar poll conducted in the latter half of 2024.
Three-quarters of companies cited the cost of employing people as their primary financial pressure.
The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has also warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year.
It comes on the back of a tough 2024 when 13,000 shops closed their doors for good, already a 28% increase on the previous year.
Professor Joshua Bamfield, director of the CRR said: “The results for 2024 show that although the outcomes for store closures overall were not as poor as in either 2020 or 2022, they are still disconcerting, withworse set to come in 2025.”
Professor Bamfield has also warned of a bleak outlook for 2025, predicting that as many as 202,000 jobs could be lost in the sector.
“By increasing both the costs of running stores and the costs on each consumer's household it is highly likely that we will see retail job losses eclipse the height of the pandemic in 2020.”
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