Carin Wester is an award winning minimalistic chic Scandinavia label, founded by the designer Carin Wester. Elle, Plaza Damernas Värld, Styleby, Style.com, Bon and other media have acknowledged Carin Wester as one of the great future designers of Scandinavian fashion.
Carin Wester has so far been very successful in creating a brand with a high level of knowledge and a very positive perception among customers, the press and in the general market but has until now not been able to profit or grow in line with these circumstances.
Global Retail joined and invested in Carin Wester with the scope of taking the company into growth and profitability. By re-organizing the company, adding essential competence, changing the balance between commercial and image pieces in the collection and focusing a lot more on sales and customer service we see a great possibility into making it happen. Now is the time when we see that the company and brand is set to becoming a market success.
The goal is to be the next fast growing Swedish brand in an international environment with a turnover of > 500 million SEK within 10 years.
After having performed just 30% of our sales efforts for this year we already see that we have surpassed our goals by 130% of revenue.
Carin Wester as a brand was born in 2004 after Carin had completed studies at Beckmans School of Design and worked for some time at H&M and Paul & Friends. In 2005 Carin Wester was awarded the Elle Award Newcomer of the Year, in 2008 Entrepreneur of the Year by E&Y and in 2009 Carin Wester won the prestigious Guldknappen award by the leading Swedish fashion magazine Damernas Värld. In 2014 Global Retail Group entered Carin Wester as a management partner and majority owner.
The Carin Wester brand has established presence in several countries. The main markets through physical retail are Scandinavia, Germany, Benelux and Japan. The fastest growing are presently Germany and Japan. Carin Wester runs its own e-trade with significant sales in many other markets, such as France, UK, USA and Australia showing that the brand has a clear global pull with possibilities of further expansion in physical retail. The Carin Wester team today consists of Carin Wester as head designer, salesdriven and financially focused Global Retail as management, a sales department, a production department, one person responsible for marketing/e-trade department and one person responsible for economy.
Global Retail Group was founded in 2007 and has since then mainly successfully introduced and expanded a retail business together with G-Star Raw. Global Retail has focused on building the strongest sales force in Sweden and has for three consecutive years (2013-2015) been ranked the number one service provider in fashion retail. In 2014 won the leading retail prize by Retail Awards for best overall customer service and Global Retail has since first possible year been classified as a Gazelle, young fast growing company by leading Swedish business magazine Dagens Industri. Alongside operating stores, Global retail has also successfully performed several consulting assignments, for example for Björn Borg.
We seek funding of 4 000 000 SEK at a valuation of 24 000 000 SEK pre-money. We aim to give our investors a minimum annual growth of 30 %. The capital will be used to finance the Global Expansion of Carin Wester. The current owners will show full commitment to the enterprise by converting SEK 2 000 000 into own capital of Carin Wester. Our plan is to give investors a minimum of 10 ROI in 5 years. Investors who are joining us now will join a focused group of shareholders who are in the steering position of the Company. We are striving to take the brand from being a market success among a relatively narrow group of initiated customers to become an international significant brand.
The company has during 10 years successfully created several internationally observed products and built a very strong brand knowledge.
Now is the time to take the brand to a wider audience! Join us!
Our strategy is to grow in our present markets. This is accomplished by enhancing and developing our local sales team by education and focusing on important measures such as long term relationship building and focusing on in-season selling. At the same time we are starting collaborations with successful and proven agents & distributors in targeted secondary markets.
The primary focus is to take the brand from a situation of some ambiguity regarding core products into becoming top of mind in women’s outerwear for all women aged 25-50. This will be done with limited means to take the most efficient measures to create growth and profitability. The company consists of five departments. These are; design, production, sales (wholesale and e-com), financial and marketing. The strength of having a clear focus is that all departments will align in one goal and hence more likely reach it.
Designing the best outerwear with a strong production, selling it to the stores that are strong in outerwear and enhance this by making sure this product group is pushed in traditional and social media makes us clearer and more likely to succeed.
Total sales in the Swedish fashion industry in 2012 amounted to SEK 229 billion. Exports account for 60 percent, SEK 137 billion, and 40 percent, SEK 92 billion, come from the domestic market. This implicates that both the domestic and international markets has great potential for Carin Wester.
We are locally present in Scandinavia, Benelux, Japan, Germany, Italy and South Korea and are growing with existing customers in all markets. The growth outside of Scandinavia has been especially strong in Germany and Japan the last couple of seasons. These two markets are especially prosperous for Swedish fashion and with exceeding 200 million in total population the potential market is huge. We regularly get inquiries for new business opportunities outside of the current markets like the US and UK. The average return on capital employed for a group of selected Swedish fashion brands was almost 18 percent for a three year period in 2013. Even though the sales of the average company in the group was only about one percent of H&M’s sales, profitability on average is as high as 50 percent as that of H&M. The success of the brand-building companies is strongly related to the success of collections. Another decisive factor is the level of comprehension of the importance of low average assets and high margins.
As an investor and key partner of the brand Carin Wester, you will get an exclusive access to:
The information above is provided ”as is” and ”as available”. We do no warrant the accuracy of the information and we accepts no liability with regard to your reliance on it. All of the above is provided solely for information purposes and does not constitute investment advice.