Dubbed “Harvey Nicks” by Edina and Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous, the two often found an excuse to nip into the department store for a spot of shopping and a long liquid lunch in the heyday of the 1990s.<\/p>\n
But Catherine Shuttleworth, retail expert and boss of Savvy Marketing, said: “If you go into a Harvey Nicks store – and I did last week – they look terrible, they look really tired and basically they’ve suffered from a lack of investment.”<\/p>\n
She told BBC Wake Up to Money that department stores “are cash-hungry monsters, they need investing, they need to look good and if you’re at the top of the luxury market that’s got to be constant”.<\/p>\n
Harvey Nichols chief executive Julia Goddard said the deal marked “an important milestone” for the company and “provides a strong platform for the next phase of the business’s evolution”.<\/p>\n
“Over the past year, we have made significant progress in repositioning this iconic business, investing in our flagship store, broadening our customer proposition, and strengthening the brand DNA,” she added.<\/p>\n
As well as Sports Direct, Frasers has bought up a huge number of retailers and their brands over the years. These include upmarket fashion chain Flannels, Savile Row tailor Gieves & Hawkes and luxury lingerie firm Agent Provocateur.<\/p>\n
It also owns Jack Wills and House of Fraser.<\/p>\n
Shuttleworth said Frasers’ boss Murray has “got his finger right on the pulse of how those [young] shoppers shop”.<\/p>\n
“If you look at what the group have done with Flannels, [Harvey Nichols] is going to be more Flannel-esque than it is going to be Sports Direct-esque,” she said.<\/p>\n
Fraser Group’s purchase of Harvey Nichols is part of its strategy to increase its presence in the luxury section. <\/p>\n
It recently launched a takeover approach for German brand Hugo Boss, which it has a stake in already. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dubbed “Harvey Nicks” by Edina and Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous, the two often found an excuse to nip…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":736814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-736813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=736813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/736814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=736813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=736813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}