Next steps forward with winning bid for Russell & Bromley

Next is closing successful connected a woody to adhd Russell & Bromley (R&B) to its unchangeable of brands arsenic different salient retail sanction prepares to vanish from the precocious street.

Sky News has learnt that the manner concatenation and its bidding partner, the banal clearance specializer Retail Realisation, could onslaught a woody to bargain R&B arsenic soon arsenic Wednesday.

People adjacent to the concern cautioned that an statement had yet to beryllium struck and it remained imaginable that it could autumn apart.

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However, Next and Retail Realisation are understood to person emerged arsenic the wide frontrunners to get the 145 year-old family-owned retailer.

Newspaper reports astatine the play suggested that the groups which ain manner brands Bench and Weird Fish were besides successful the moving for R&B.

Sky News revealed earlier this period that Next had partnered with Retail Realisation connected the deal, with a transaction apt to spell the extremity for the footwear chain's 37 stores.

Next would go the proprietor of Russell & Bromley's brand, with Retail Realisation, which is affiliated with precocious thoroughfare capitalist Modella Capital, taking complaint of a banal liquidation process.

Next has, however, stepped distant from pursuing a l akin woody for LK Bennett, the manner marque which filed a announcement of volition to name administrators this month.

Employing much than 450 people, Russell & Bromley made its debut successful 1880 with the opening of its archetypal store successful Eastbourne.

Seven years earlier, George Bromley and Elizabeth Russell, some of whom hailed from shoemaking families, were married, paving the mode for the constitution of the business.

Russell & Bromley is present tally by Andrew Bromley, the 5th procreation of his household to clasp the reins.

Billie Piper, the histrion and singer, is the existent look of the marque arsenic it tries to entreaty to younger consumers arsenic portion of a five-year turnaround plan.

In caller years, Next has bought brands specified arsenic Cath Kidston, Joules and Seraphine, the maternitywear retailer for knockdown prices.

Next besides owns Made.com, the online furnishings retailer, and FatFace, the precocious thoroughfare manner brand.

Under Lord Wolfson, its seasoned main executive, Next has defied the wider precocious thoroughfare gloom to go 1 of the UK's best-run businesses.

It precocious upgraded its full-year nett forecast aft a palmy Christmas trading period.

Next did not respond to a petition for comment, portion Retail Realisation and Interpath, which is advising R&B, declined to comment.