Asos targets Black Friday Topshop splash after ‘great early momentum’

Asos bought four former Arcadia brands – Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge and HIIT activewear – earlier this year after Sir Philip Green’s retail empire collapsed into administration.

The fashion etailer has already relaunched the brands on its own website, and is now looking forward to revealing autumn/winter 2021 products fully designed by the Asos team for Black Friday on November 26.

Asos chief executive Nick Beighton said: “Asos have started designing Topshop and Topman product now, and we expect to have the Asos design element feeding through with real authority by autumn/winter, in time for Black Friday. This will be the other exciting moment on our journey.”

Asos also plans to publish supply chain lists for all four brands by the end of 2021.

He added: “We’re looking for these brands to be more inclusive, sustainable and to fit the Asos credentials.”

Asos has outlined a 100-day plan to fully integrate the brands, on which Beighton says “significant headway” has already been made, evident in “great early customer momentum”.

Beighton said: “Three weeks after the completion of the deal, we successfully completed a full customer relaunch supported by multichannel marketing across various social media platforms, with website redirect now also in place.

“Our TikTok campaigns have seen phenomenal success, with the two running across the UK and US reaching 200 million customers and almost 3 billion views. 

“We’ve seen strong sales momentum with triple-digit growth across Topshop, Topman and HIIT since our relaunch, with Miss Selfridge posting healthy sales growth up 50%.”

Beighton told Retail Week that early signs from the four brands were “encouraging” and in line with Asos’ expectations when they purchased the brands.

“We’re very pleased with how Topshop has performed,” he said.

“In the period since relaunch on February 23, we saw traffic increase to those brands on our site by over 220%. We always knew that the brands resonated with our customers, and we said at the time of acquisition that we knew these brands resonated with the fashion-loving 20-something globally.

“We also predicted that these brands resonate most strongly in the UK, North America and Germany, and we’re delighted that played out the way we thought. We are pleasantly surprised with it, but it’s what we expected with such iconic brands that we’ve now been able to fold into the Asos stable.”