1,000 jobs saved as Birmingham entrepreneur saves high street chain
Around 1,000 jobs are expected to be saved at a Birmingham-based hair salon chain after a rescue deal was struck with administrators.
Birmingham entrepreneur Lee Bushell has agreed to buy 140 outlets trading under the Supercuts and Regis brands across the UK. The deal is understood to involve the closure of about 60 sites and that around 200 jobs may be lost as a result of the closures.
Lee Bushell ran gold-buying company Guardian Jewellery Co. before exiting in 2011 and setting up Bushell Investment Group. Earlier this year he bought Aspray24, a transport and logistics business based in Willenhall.
Lee Bushell
“This will safeguard over 1,000 jobs and ensure the brand retains it presence on our high street.”
James Bushell opened his first hair salon in Edgbaston in 2006 and in the last five years has added sites in Solihull, within Harvey Nicholls in Birmingham, and in Sutton Coldfield.
Regis UK, which owns the Supercuts and Regis brands, slipped into administration in October. Deloitte was appointed to look after the day-to-day running of the firm and search for a buyer.
The move thwarts a legal challenge to Regis UK’s Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA), an agreement with creditors that would have involved steep rent cuts at many of its sites.
The CVA sought rent reductions in half of its 220 sites, but kept all of its sites open with no job losses.
The hairdressing chain has been reducing the number of salons over several years but has failed to stop losses increasing.
In 2011, the last year the group made a pre-tax profit, revenues were £89m. Six consecutive years of lower revenues had reduced sales to £65.3m, but in that period aggregate losses had reached more than £14m – including £5.1m in the year to July 2017.
