Frasers Group Is Buying Matchesfashion

Frasers Group, the U.K. retail group founded and owned by billionaire Mike Ashley, is purchasing the luxury e-commerce site Matchesfashion, Business of Fashion reports, in a deal valued at £52 million (or about $63 million).

This follows about a week of negotiations between the two companies. (Frasers reportedly beat out just a handful of other bidders, including fellow U.K.-based retailer Next, per Sky News.) Matchesfashion becomes the second luxury e-retailer to be purchased this week, after Farfetch was bought in a $500 million emergency deal by Coupang.

Matchesfashion was founded in 1987 by Tom and Ruth Chapman. They and their venture capital investors, Scottish Equity Partners and Highland Europe, sold a majority stake to private equity firm Apax Partners in 2017; at the time, the retailer was reported to have had a $1 billion valuation.

Matchesfashion has had a revolving door of chief executives in recent years, until Nick Beighton came on as CEO in 2022. Despite reporting a 1.7% decline in revenue for the year ending Jan. 31, 2023, he told WWD in November: "We're doing a massive cultural reboot, and the reason for that is the team has had four different CEOs in as many years — having people anchored in what we're trying to achieve is really important because we can't do anything without the people." Apax invested £60 million in the retailer earlier this year.

Beighton will remain on the team and will be "working closely with the Frasers team to develop a strategy to successfully build on the underlying strength of the business whilst rapidly unlocking synergies," said the companies, in a statement to Business of Fashion.

For Frasers, the new deal is meant to "elevate" its portfolio. Murray said that it "will strengthen Frasers' luxury offering, further deepening our relationships and accelerating our mission to provide consumers with access to the world’s best brands," in a statement to Business of Fashion. "Whilst the global luxury environment is softer, we are confident that by leveraging our industry-leading ecosystem we will unlock synergies and drive profitable growth for Matches."

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