The NEXT Brand
The NEXT retail chain was launched in February 1982 and the first store opened with an exclusive coordinated collection of stylish clothes, shoes and accessories for women. Collections for men, children and the home quickly followed. NEXT clothes are styled by its in-house design team to offer great style, quality and value for money with a contemporary fashion edge.
Today NEXT trades from more than 500 stores in the UK and Eire and almost 200 stores in more than 40 countries overseas. Over the last few years several larger format fashion and home stores have opened across the UK and, in August 2011, NEXT opened its first combined fashion, home and garden store at Shoreham-by-Sea.
The groundbreaking mail order operation NEXT Directory launched in 1988 with a hardback book containing 350 pages, creating the blueprint for catalogue retailing. There are almost 1,400 pages in the Spring Summer 2014 book offering extensive collections for men, women, children and everything for the well dressed home.
Online shopping was introduced in 1999 and the entire book became available to shop from on the internet, page by page – another first in home shopping in the UK. NEXT Directory now also serves customers in around 70 countries outside the UK.
NEXT continues to improve customer service, introducing new initiatives such as next day delivery as standard for NEXT Directory orders placed before 10pm.
Customers may collect or return items at any of our stores nationwide should this be more convenient, and a new in-house delivery service has been set up to deliver large Home items with the ability to deliver at weekends. As well as placing orders, customers are able to check their accounts and make payments online.
Other group businesses
NEXT Sourcing has operations in mainland China, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, India and the UK engaged in the design, sourcing, buying, merchandising and quality control of NEXT products.
Lipsy designs and sells its own branded younger women’s fashion products.
Business strategies and objectives
The primary financial objective of the NEXT group is to deliver long term returns to shareholders through a combination of sustainable growth in earnings per share and payment of cash dividends. NEXT believes this objective is best achieved by continuation of the following strategies:
- Improving and developing NEXT product ranges, success in which is measured by sales performance.
- Profitably increasing retail selling space. New store appraisals must meet demanding financial criteria before the investment is made and success is measured by achieved profit contribution and return on capital against appraised targets.
- Increasing the number of profitable NEXT Directory customers and their spend, both in the UK and through international online sales.
- Managing gross and net margins through efficient product sourcing, stock management and cost control.
- Maintaining the Group’s financial strength through an efficient balance sheet and secure financing structure.
- Generating and returning surplus cash to shareholders by way of share buybacks or, more recently, special dividends.
