Pledge to give Barratts new lease of life

Mr Ziff, whose family have been in the footwear industry for almost 100 years, bought 89 Barratts and Priceless stores from administrators Deloitte, saving 1,184 jobs and its Bradford head office.

However, it could not prevent about 2,500 job losses, with around 100 stores and 359 concessions closing.

Mr Ziff also put Barratts into administration in 2009 after a failed attempt to restructure its debts via a company voluntary arrangement (CVA). He subsequently bought it back. Prior to its first collapse, the retailer was owned by Stylo Plc and traded from 385 stores with about 5,450 staff.

Mr Ziff said a flawed strategy led to Barratts’ latest failure, but insisted he can make a success of a more nimble retailer.

“It’s a business I will concentrate 100 per cent on,” he said. “It’s a very tight business and a very focused team. It’s got more capital.

“We’re also talking about a business that’s going to be substantially smaller.”

He said Barratts put “too much synthetic and cheaper footwear in the business” and needs to “put better quality in”. He added the retailer will target “slightly older and slightly more upmarket” customers in future.

Barratts will also be “very web-based” in future, but has no plans to expand its store portfolio. “I don’t think we need lots of shops,” he said.

When Barratts collapsed in December, Deloitte blamed the “challenging trading environment” and mild winter.

Barratts joined a list of growing retail failures which includes Focus DIY, Past Times, Habitat, Blacks Leisure and Peacocks.

Mr Ziff also said he invested too much time and money into its concessions, growing them from 150 to about 360.

Most of the concessions were in Dorothy Perkins and Outfit stores, chains owned by Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia retail empire.

“The second error we made was building up the concessions business,” he said. “We were putting in all the working capital and wages.

“It was taking tens of millions of pounds – for him (Sir Philip), very profitable, but for me, not profitable. He was making a serious amount of money. We were making very little.”

Mr Ziff said for every £1 of profit Barratts made in the concessions, Arcadia made £10.

Arcadia refused to comment.

Mr Ziff said that Arcadia was left holding the larger part of the business through the concessions.

“They are going to run it themselves. He (Sir Philip) will put shoes in with his own brand on. He will build up a shoe business.”

The concessions business was very successful in 2010, he added, making Barratts “a lot of money”.

“But when sales start to drop so your whole business model starts to get affected.”

Administrators Deloitte yesterday refused to say how much Barratts owed creditors.

Mr Ziff said he was not “harsh” enough with suppliers following its first collapse, and did not restructure fully.

“We paid some very large sums of money to our suppliers,” he said. “We honoured what had effectively been done in the CVA; we were not able to restructure.

“In the main suppliers got paid out. Basically we had secured supplies which were clearly expensive in retrospect. We should have been more harsh.”

He declined to say what he will pay creditors. “There will be some payout from the administrator and then we will have to sit down with suppliers to see what they are prepared to do to work with us.”

Mr Ziff said the new company, Barratts Trading Limited, is controlled by the Ziff family with “external players” involved, and “ostensibly self-financed”.

A family dynasty

The Ziff family has been in the footwear industry for almost a century. Max Ziff, who fled to Britain from Russia, set up the first Stylo shoe shop in Leeds, moving to Huddersfield in 1919. Arnold Ziff joined his father’s firm in 1948 during a period when it flourished.

In 1964 it bought W Barratt and Company. That year the first phase of Leeds’ Merrion Centre was built by Mr Ziff’s Town Centre Securities.

Mr Ziff became one of the region’s most successful and generous businessmen, supporting education, health and arts in the city.

He retired from Stylo in 2000 with his son, Michael, becoming chairman.