Covid-19: Esprit to close all stores in Asia outside mainland China

KUALA LUMPUR (April 28): Esprit Holdings will close all its stores in Asia outside mainland China “to cope with challenges” posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported yesterday.

The Hong Kong-listed company announced that it will close 56 shops in Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau by June 30.

The closures are part of its “restructuring initiatives to focus resources and recalibrate operations” amid the pandemic, SCMP reported Esprit saying.

“The whole industry has been affected by the global crisis. We first felt the impacts in Asia and now in Europe, where many of our stores have been closed.

“This is forcing us to look at the contribution all markets make to the group’s performance,” Anders Kristiansen, chief executive of Esprit Group, told the Hong Kong English language daily.

Esprit said its “wholesale and licence business in Asia will continue”, “as well as its joint venture business in mainland China”.

It will now focus on its core markets in Europe, it added.

It was reported that Esprit has reopened some stores in Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands that it had closed during lockdown but it also said that it “is unable to predict when business will return to normal or how much of an impact the pandemic will have on full-year results”.

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