Hunting for a purchaser: Celebrity-favourite wellie-maker looks to cash in on post-Covid festival boom
Hunter Boot, which holds two royal warrants, has recruited advisers from AlixPartners to sound out potential acquirers
A Wellie-maker cherished by celebrities resembling Kate Moss is wanting for a purchaser. Hunter Boot, which holds two royal warrants, has recruited advisers from AlixPartners to sound out potential acquirers amid a post-Covid boom.
Founded in 1856 because the North British Rubber Company, the heritage footwear model’s waterproof boots have been worn by Royals such because the late Princess Diana. The boots – which promote for £125 –have additionally been worn by celebrities resembling Rita Ora, Alexa Chung, Daisy Lowe and Cara Delevingne.
Demand for the model’s boots have surged due to the return of music festivals this summer season after the easing of pandemic restrictions. And the boots have grow to be must-haves for festival goers after supermodel Moss wore them to Glastonbury in 2005.
Hunter can be anticipated to reap the rewards of Covid-19 restrictions in China being scrapped, with demand for high-end attire from customers in this market set to rebound.
Sales tanked amid the pandemic when customers have been home-bound, inflicting the upmarket retailer to require a £18.5m lifeline from its traders. Since 2020, the enterprise has been managed by Goldman Sachs-backed funding car Pall Mall Legacy.
Edinburgh-based Hunter Boot can be nearing the completion of a £7million cash injection, in addition to separate discussions about an outright sale.
Alongside majority shareholder Pall Mall Legacy, different traders embrace Searchlight Capital Partners, a New York-based personal fairness agency, and Pentland Group, the proprietor of sportswear manufacturers like Speedo and Berghaus.
As the North British Rubber Company – based in Scotland by Americans Henry Lee Norris and Spencer Thomas Parmelee – the corporate provided rubber boots to the Army throughout the First and Second World Wars, after it was the primary agency to manufacture the product in the UK.
Its most up-to-date set of accounts revealed that the corporate posted a lack of £5.1million on gross sales of £108million in the 12 months to January 2022.
It has bodily shops in Bicester Village in Oxfordshire and Woodbury in New York. The enterprise additionally opened a retailer in London’s Regent Street in 2014.
Although recognized for promoting its vary of Wellington boots, it has extra not too long ago launched a wider vary of equipment and clothes, resembling baggage and puffer jackets.
