After filing for accelerated debt restructuring with its creditors in 2024, Ba&sh brand was taken over by its three founders, Sharon Krief, Barbara Boccara and Dan Arrouas.
The French brand, launched in 2003 and known for its “accessible luxury”, faced declining consumption in China last year, which hit sales and made its debt burden too high, according to Le Monde newspaper.
For 2025, the three founders will take over the operational management of the group again, the brand announced in a press release. The French fund HLD (which has had a stake in the company since 2022) will remain a shareholder. Without specifying an amount, the brand indicates that the group’s holding company is “financially strengthened with the confidence of its banking partners” to finance this revival.
Going forward, the brand will follow a new strategic plan, developed by the co-founders and called “New Beginnings”. It will be rolled out to 2028 and includes four pillars: dynamic and premium management of the store portfolio, reorientation and creativity of the offer, reaffirmation of the brand identity and optimisation of operational efficiency.
“(…) Today, as we begin a new chapter in our entrepreneurial adventure by taking back the general management of the company, we are more convinced than ever of its enormous potential,” Boccara, Krief and Arrouas said in a joint statement. “With the support of our highly committed teams and our partner-shareholder HLD. 2025 will be the year of return to basics for ba&sh.”
The brand will therefore refocus on its identity, revive “a performance-oriented culture within [its] collective” and further develop its model to meet the new expectations of the market. “The first positive developments are already visible with renewed growth since September 2024, positive profitability and the success of the “June Tote” bag launched in September, the best launch in the accessories category in the history of the brand,” the press release said.
More specifically, investments in visibility will be made to emphasise the brand’s distinctive values, with a loyalty programme to retain customers; upcoming collections will focus on knitwear and dresses, with fewer models and more depth in the range and colour variations; and a more selective opening policy will be implemented in promising areas. Finally, the brand announces that the online site (making up 25 percent of sales) is currently being revamped. This should become a major growth engine.
The Ba&sh group currently has a turnover of almost 300 million euros, 60 percent of which is international, with 1,400 employees and 330 stores on three continents (Europe, North America, Asia).
This article originally appeared on FashionUnited.FR. It was translated to English using AI and edited by Rachel Douglass.
FashionUnited uses AI language tools to speed up translating (news) articles and proofread the translations to improve the end result. This saves our human journalists time they can spend doing research and writing original articles. Articles translated with the help of AI are checked and edited by a human desk editor prior to going online. If you have questions or comments about this process email us at [email protected]
