Jacobson and Ziff team up to relaunch Barratts online

NORTH West entrepreneur Harvey Jacobson has relaunched the Barratts shoe business as an online brand, in partnership with friend and former Barratts boss Michael Ziff.

The move comes after the collapse of the Barratts Stylo shoe retailing group last year following its third administration in four years.

Mr Jacobson’s Lancashire-based shoe business, Jacobson Group, which owns brands including Lotus, bought parts of the Barratts  business from administrators including the Saxone, Stylo, Barratts, Priceless and Instep brands as well as its website and database of 2 million people.

The new online Barratts business, called DCR Ltd,  will be officially launched this week and Mr Ziff said a trial last weekend saw eight times the traffic expected to the site.

He said the plan is to expand the product offering to include clothing, sportswear and equipment for outdoor activities.

“It’s a portal, initially through Barratts but we will see what happens. We want to be pushing upmarket. We are still a high street  brand and the British shopper still wants high street brands,” said Mr Ziff.

Mr Jacobson is the chairman of the new business while Mr Ziff said he will be using his contacts in the shoe industry to develop relationships.

Mr Ziff admitted that mistakes were made with the old business. “Twice we tried to replicate the old Barratts. The reality of it is that we didn’t change fast enough after the first administration. We set out with a business model that was broken some time ago in terms of shops and the internet.

“The cost base of the old business was unsustainable – rents, rates, service charges, security, the whole thing.

“Unless you grow your turnover, costs cannot keep rising too greatly. It is about the change in the high street.”

He said the new venture is being run very differently, with low overheads and an outsourced adminstration operation.

“We are building a cost base on a conservative turnover number, here is a business model that is sustainable when turnover is low – in retail we couldn’t do that.

He said competitors were likely to be Hotter, Clarks, Marks & Spencer and Debenhams.

Mr Ziff said he had been tempted to walk away from the shoe business following the collapse of Barratts last November, but a rest over Christmas and the encouragement of Mr Jacobson, a friend for over 30 years, had changed his mind.

Looking back at the Barratts administration, he said: “It has been a difficult period for a lot of people. I felt really, really bad about a lot of people that have worked with me losing their jobs.”

Barratts employed 1,100 people and had 75 stores and 23 concessions across the UK and Ireland when it collapsed, and, at its peak, had more than 6,000 staff.

The new business has acquired a warehouse for stock and distribution in Northamptonshire and there were links to the original Barratts which his father Arnold acquired through his Stylo business in 1964.