Boohoo Group grows with MissPap acquisition

By

Barbara Santamaria

Published
Mar 26, 2019

Boohoo Group has added another womenswear brand to its portfolio as it confirmed the acquisition of UK fashion e-tailer MissPap for an undisclosed sum on Monday.

Founded as a single brand in 2006, Boohoo Group has been expanding its presence in the affordable womenswear segment over the last few years by purchasing PrettyLittleThing and Nasty Gal in 2017.

Like the other brands in Boohoo’s portfolio, MissPap is an on-trend fast-fashion retailer with a strong social media presence and a focus on celebrity and street style fashion.

Ads

It was established in 2015 and boasts of over a million followers on Instagram, helped by a series of collaborations with influencers and reality stars who promote the brand across their social channels.

“MissPap is a brand with great potential which can leverage the group's expertise,” commented John Lyttle, chief executive officer of Boohoo Group.

“This acquisition further strengthens our multi brand platform, representing an exciting opportunity to accelerate our offering to our ever-growing range of customers globally.”

The investment continues to build Boohoo’s strength in the fashion ecommerce market for 16 to 30-year-olds around the world. MissPap’s core focus is the UK market, but Nasty Gal is based in the US and the group sells products to customers in almost every country in the world, especially in the UK, US, Europe and Australia.

“Boohoo Group's acquisition of Misspap will give the retailer another vehicle to drive rapid growth, as it has done with PrettyLittleThing, with its younger brand set to leapfrog  boohoo.com in terms of market share in the UK in 2019, bolstering the group as its more established fascia growth slows,” Sofie Willmott, a senior retail analyst at data and analytics company GlobalData commented.

But clear differentiation will be key to ensure all of the group’s brands are well placed to thrive in the highly competitive young fashion market. “Both boohoo.com and PrettyLittleThing have carved out a strong reputation for striking, going-out clothing so there is an opportunity for Misspap to become the group’s destination for casualwear, stealing share from young fashion specialists that are failing to entice shoppers,” Willmott concluded.