Polish fashion giant LPP is edging closer to a UK debut after agreeing a 25-year lease with BHS on its flagship Oxford Street store.

Retail Week takes a closer look at the company’s history, its portfolio and recent financial performance

• Lubianiec Piechocki i Partnerzy is headquartered in Gdansk, Poland, and has offices in Krakow, Shanghai and Dhaka

• The company was formed by Marek Piechocki and Jerzy Lubianiec in 1991 under the initial name of Mistral

• Four years later, the company’s name was changed to LPP – derived from the first letters of the names of its founders: Lubianiec, Piechocki and Partners. The duo remain president and vice-president of the management board respectively

• LPP began trading publicly on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) in 2001

• As well as Reserved, it also owns a host of other fascias including Sinsay, Cropp Town, House and Mohito

• It welcomed the latter two brands into its portfolio in 2009 after merging with the Artman company to become the largest clothing network in Poland

• The fashion giant has a total of 1,574 shops in 17 countries including Germany, Russia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine

• LPP also operates stores outside of Europe, in Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, having debuted in all four of those countries last year

• The company employs 20,000 people and sells 70 million garments every year

• The business reported a gross profit of €109.78m in the 2014 calendar year, on sales of €1.138bn

• The clothing for all of LPP’s brands is designed in Poland, but primarily manufactured in China and India

• LPP was the first Polish clothing company to sign up to the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, aimed at improving safety in factories producing garments in Bangladesh. It came after a warehouse collapsed in the country back in 2013, killing 1,129 workers

• In January 2014, Facebook users launched a campaign to boycott LPP clothing after it emerged that the business was re-registering a number of its brands in Cyprus and the United Arab Emirates, in order to pay less tax

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