Covid crisis pushes Hugo Boss into the red

Like many other fashion companies, Hugo Boss was hit hard by the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic last year. The label expects to recover in the second half of 2021, although it does not venture into a precise forecast.

Losses

Due to the temporary store closures and far-reaching international travel restrictions, the German group saw its turnover fall by no less than 31 % to 1.95 billion euros. The crisis caused Hugo Boss to end the year with a hefty loss: its operating result plunged 236 million euros below zero, compared to a profit of 344 million euros in 2019, WirtschaftsWoche reports.

Hugo Boss’ online sales did grow sharply, with a revenue increase of almost 50 %. E-commerce allowed the company to pass the threshold of 200 million euros in online sales for the first time. The webshop expanded to 32 additional markets. However, compared to other major fashion brands, such as Mango, the share of those online sales is still limited.

Digitisation and efficiency

Hugo Boss claims to have succeeded in increasing the efficiency and flexibility of its operational processes thanks to extensive digitisation. More than half of all products are now created digitally, resulting in ever shorter lead times.

“An important milestone in this regard is our fully digitally developed Boss casualwear collection, which we will launch this summer”, a spokesperson stated. “It only took eight weeks to develop, which impressively demonstrates how digitisation enables us to respond significantly faster to market trends and thus meet our customers’ needs even better.”

Hugo Boss assumes that the recovery from the Covid lockdowns will only really kick in during the second half of the year, a period during which the company aims for a “significant improvement” in sales and earnings.