Bet your shirt on a Ben Sherman revival

But come the 2000s, the brand was losing its cool and drifting downmarket.

In came some new blood and so began a turnaround story that last week added a Yorkshire angle when Ben Sherman opened a new concept store in Leeds, its only one planned for the North of England.

The £60m-turnover company has entered into a joint venture with Hip, an independent retailer with a long track record of bringing new brands to the city.

The resulting store, in Thornton’s Arcade, showcases the label’s sub-brand, Plectrum, whose latest collection has been hailed by the fashion press as “a vision of an English gent from times gone by”.

Mark Maidment, creative director of Ben Sherman, told the Yorkshire Post that the company chose Leeds “because it’s a great city”.

His company considered Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and Newcastle but in the end went for Leeds because of “a gut feeling” rather than any detailed analysis of market research.

There was also his friendship with Everton Campbell, co-founder of Hip. The pair met in 1994 when Mr Maidment was working at Diesel, along with Pan Philippou, now the chief executive of Ben Sherman.

Mr Maidment, 41, bumped into Mr Campbell, 44, two years ago at Bread & Butter in Berlin, one of the big European trade shows.

“He said he liked what we have been doing at Ben Sherman,” said Mr Maidment.

“We have had a pretty successful time internationally, but in the UK we have had a chequered past.”

Buyout firm 3i owned Ben Sherman from 1993 to 2004, when it sold the business for £80m to Oxford Industries, an American clothing retailer listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Mr Maidment said the company was in “a bit of a sorry state” when he joined in 2002. He said: “Distribution had slipped. Price point had slipped. Quality had slipped. The brand identity had slipped.

“When a brand slips, it takes time to build it back up. Oxford Industries came along, loved the brand and loved that it was global.”

The management team decided to focus on international markets. It is now in 39 countries, including North America, Europe, South Africa, Australia, Japan, Philippines and Singapore.

“Our international markets are young, in terms of how long we have been there. They were ripe for us,” said Mr Maidment.

Ben Sherman concentrated on improving the offer overseas and then imported the revitalised brand to the UK “to help change people’s perceptions”, he added.

Following the meeting at Berlin, Mr Campbell worked as a consultant on Ben Sherman’s Modern Classics collection. “His knowledge of product and experience of retail was gold dust to me,” said Mr Maidment.

Mr Campbell said the idea of the store in Leeds “felt really natural” and Ben Sherman has “a great history and a great story”.

He founded Hip with business partner Umberto Annecchini in November 1987.

Mr Campbell said: “It was the time when it was quite easy to get help from the Government if you wanted your own business. It was with the Enterprise Allowance Scheme. It wasn’t a lot of money but it still helped.

“We were making a lot of our own stuff, which was sourced locally through the old mills and factories in Bradford.

“We used to go and get the back end of rolls and make suits and retail them.

“We did that so well we opened a store in Hyper Hyper in Kensington High Street in London selling suits and formal wear. Then house music came along and the sale of suits went down but the sale of T-shirts went up, especially those with smiley faces on them.”

They left London and returned to Leeds to sell women’s fashion labels like Chloe, Vivienne Westwood and Diesel, where he met Mr Maidment.

Mr Campbell said: “We found new brands and built them up.”

Hip has won a number of awards as an independent retailer. Turnover last year was £1.1m.

Cool Britannia

British fashion design is famous the world over for its innovation, eccentricity and creativity, according to Mark Maidment, creative director at Ben Sherman, which has stores in 39 countries.

“We are very lucky,” he told the Yorkshire Post. “People see Britishness as cool. It’s as simple as that. In terms of clothing, they look at our fantastic history. They also admire our tailoring and the British aesthetic of fabrics and fit.”

Ben Sherman clothes are made in Portugal, Turkey, the Far East and increasingly in the UK.

The company works with firms such as Yorkshire-owned Harris Tweed and Yorkshire-founded British Millerain.