Some 19 Joules stores are set to close with immediate effect under a deal to buy the UK fashion business out of administration.
Next has teamed up with Joules founder Tom Joule to strike a £34 million deal for Joules which will see around 100 stores keep trading and secure 1,450 jobs within those shops and at the Market Harborough head office.
Under the plans 19 Joules stores will stop trading with immediate effect with the loss of 133 jobs.
Next becomes the majority shareholder under the partnership which sees Mr Joule – who founded Joules in 1989 – take 24 per cent.
Joules will remain a stand-alone business, with its own board and management, although its online operations will go through Next’s Total Platform system. Both businesses are based in Leicestershire.
The new owners beat competition from South African firm Foschini Group, which owns the Whistles and Phase Eight brands. Next will also buy Joules’s head office in Market Harborough for £7 million.
Next chief executive Lord Simon Wolfson said: “We are excited to see what can be achieved through the combination of Joules’s exceptional product, marketing and brand building skills with Next’s Total Platform infrastructure.”
Next recently bought the brand, websites and intellectual property of online furniture business Made.com after it also collapsed.
The administration resulted in 320 redundancies, while a further 79 workers who had resigned and were working their notice were forced to immediately leave.
Next had planned to take a 25 per cent stake in Joules for around £15 million last summer, but the talks ended back in September. Joules went into administration in the middle of November when no other investor was found.
Shares in Joules were suspended on the AIM Stock Exchange when the administrators moved in and it is too early to say what the estimated outcome for Joules creditors will be.
However, more information will be provided in the joint administrators proposals to creditors which must be published within eight weeks of the date of their appointment.
Insolvency legislation means shareholders will be the last class of creditor to receive a distribution and they will only receive a distribution if and after all other creditors have been paid in full.
