Sosandar on course for annual targets with strong autumn performance

Sosandar, the Wilmslow-based online women’s fashion brand, says it is on course for annual revenues of £46.8m and a £100,000 pre-tax profit.

Earlier this year the AIM-listed online business, founded by co-CEOs, Ali Hall and Julie Lavington, achieved its first profit since formation in 2015.

Its results for the six months ended September 30, 2023, showed net revenue growth of six per cent to £22.2m (HY23: £21.0m), a loss before tax of £1.3m (HY23: £0.1m profit), and net cash of £7m, (FY23: £10.6m).

The business said autumn trading has been strong, and the company is trading in line with full year market expectations.

All channels have performed well with strong revenue growth, increased gross margin, positive pre-tax profit in both months and a record month of trading in November, with similar momentum in December to date.

Revenue for October and November was in excess of £10m, a 16% increase on the same period last year and a significant improvement on the six per cent growth achieved in H1 FY24.

It achieved a strong performance on its own site and one of the top selling brands across all third-party partners including Next and M&S.

Sosandar has also made substantial progress towards opening its first own stores, with locations identified ahead of a planned launch early in financial year 2025.

Its Sainsbury’s brand-new fashion concept stores went live in early October with a wide range of Sosandar product selling well in all nine stores.

And the business has signed new agreements with two large prestigious international third-party partners: The Iconic in Australia, which has recently launched, and The Bay in Canada, which is expected to launch during the latter part H2 FY24.

Sosandar said its balance sheet remains robust with its cash position increasing to £7.3m at November 30, 2023.

The mobile app, which went live in July, has performed very well, with c.70,000 downloads to date and generating already 10% of own site sales at higher conversion rates than through mobile web browsing.

Co-CEOs, Ali Hall and Julie Lavington, said: “Over the past six months, we have made significant steps on our journey to become a multi-channel retailer whilst also expanding the reach of the Sosandar brand. We are delighted to have launched new partnerships with Sainsbury’s and Freemans, signed our first agreements with two large prestigious international third party partners and announced that we intend to open our first own stores in spring 2024.

“Our product remains the key driver of our success and keeps our customers returning to us for their wardrobe needs. Throughout the period, we saw growth across all product ranges with particular success in our summer occasion wear and beach and swim ranges over the summer.

“In the lead up to Christmas we have seen extremely strong sales across all categories with party wear, dresses, tailoring, knitwear and smart trousers being standout items.”

They added: “Trading in the second half of the financial year to date has been encouraging, in line with full year market expectations, with November a record month of trading. This strong performance has been delivered across all our channels.

“Looking ahead, we believe that the future is very bright as we take the Sosandar brand to more customers across the UK and worldwide and move further towards reaching our strategic goal of delivering £100m+ revenues and a pre-tax profit margin of at least 10% in the medium term.”