2024

INTEGRATED REPORT

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OFFICE

ASPIRATIONAL
FASHION

Office has a proud London heritage, strongly influenced by the iconic London fashion culture and focused on young, fashionable female and male consumers in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. Office is a sought-after retail partner for the best fashion footwear and top sneaker brands globally and has a unique positioning in the market with a strong focus on the female customer.

Offspring is a brand within the Office portfolio that caters for the sneaker-loving community and offers a range of limited, highly fashionable sneakers from the world’s top brands. Offspring offers product that cannot readily be found in traditional retail outlets and the limited accessibility of collectable product drives a high level of engagement with the passionate Offspring community.

FASHION FOOTWEAR

Multiple leading brands along with Office’s own-brand made-to-order (MTO) product create a fashion footwear destination for customers to complete their fashion look.

Branded footwear
Office holds a premium mainstream market positioning and is committed to providing customers with quality footwear that is fashionable and on trend.

Relationships with key brand partners ensure Office has better product access on best sellers, and attracts larger stock allocations and broader ranges. The value and strength of these relationships was evident in the past year with several joint marketing and brand alliance events being undertaken. Office’s new store design concept has attracted further support from brand partners.

The merchandise team is highly receptive to introducing new brands in Office and Offspring. Brand partners and customers alike recognise Office as an exciting and strategically important retail partner for launching brands that showcase the latest styles and brands and ‘must-have’ shoes for the season.

Office also collaborates with key brands to design and develop unique product exclusively available in Office and Offspring stores. Relationships with branded partners have been developed over many years and Office works closely with suppliers to identify future trends and build mutually beneficial strategies to enhance brand exposure and elevation.

The multitude of brands sold by Office reduces brand exposure risk to the business and ensures there is no reliance on a single supplier.

Own-brand footwear
The branded offering is complemented by Office’s own-label MTO fashion footwear. The product ranges are designed in-house and sourced globally from European and Asian countries that offer excellent quality and value. European suppliers provide quick response and the ability to react speedily to customer demand. This is particularly important to ensure that Office showcases emerging trends in a highly competitive and fast-paced fashion footwear market.

MTO is a strategic pillar of the business. Following the disappointing performance of own-label MTO in recent years, a new merchandise team was appointed to revitalise the product offering and ensure that Office maintains its status as the style leader in high-street footwear fashion.

The revised product and sourcing strategy has involved improving the product handwriting of the MTO offering to ensure the range is current, fashionable and feminine. Buying and technical teams have worked closely with suppliers to ensure product is of high quality. The early-stage improvement in MTO performance, notably in ladies’ footwear, has contributed to lower markdown and promotional sales that supported the gross margin.

Supply chain challenges with shipping delays of approximately three weeks impacted stock availability for the 2024 summer season, which adversely affected sales.

Management aims to increase the contribution from this higher margin category as a proportion of total sales to strengthen Office’s gross margin and to further entrench its unique market proposition.

ETHICAL PRODUCT MANUFACTURING

Office is committed to ethical and fair manufacturing. All own-label suppliers are required to comply with the Office Code of Ethics and Good Business Practice, which is designed to be fair, achievable and promote the ongoing development of suppliers.

The code is based on international standards including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Labour Organization Conventions. The code’s general principles ensure that all people who are employed through Office’s suppliers have decent working conditions, are not exploited and are treated fairly and with dignity. All products must be produced lawfully, through fair and honest dealings.

A formal statement from the board is published annually on the Office website, in compliance with the UK Modern Slavery Act.

2024

INTEGRATED REPORT