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Edinburgh Woollen Mill pulls out of House of Fraser

Lauretta Roberts
05 September 2018

Edinburgh Woollen Mill is pulling out of House of Fraser stores having failed to make an agreement about its ongoing relationship with new owner Sports Direct.

The business, which owns brands including Jaeger, Jacques Vert and Austin Reed and which also manufactures suiting for House of Fraser's Linea brand, began moving stock out of the 35 stores in which it has concessions today.

It is owned by retail billionaire Philip Day who lost out to Sports Direct in the race to acquire House of Fraser. To enable Sports Direct's £90m acquisition, House of Fraser was briefly placed into administration last month wiping out the debts racked up by its previous owner, Nanjing Cenbest.

Day's group is said to be owed £3m but the decision to withdraw from House of Fraser is not believe to be linked to this, according to a report in The Guardian.

A spokesperson for the business said it had been working hard to agree satisfactory trading terms but had been unable to do so. “We remain firmly open to discussions with House of Fraser, and hope they will engage with us. We have also received a firm guarantee from the top management of Sports Direct that all sales since the takeover will be paid in full on 10 September, and anticipate that that guarantee will be honoured,” he told the newspaper.

House of Fraser is still understood to be unable to reach an agreement with XPO Logistics, who operates its two warehouses. According to the administrator's report XPO was the hardest hit by the retailer's collapse and was owed £30m, though some reports place the loss at around half that figure.

Nonetheless it was sufficient for XPO to down tools and refuse to work for House of Fraser forcing the retailer to take its website offline, which remains the case.

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