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Moss Bros Group Plc Business Information, Profile, and History

8 Saint Johns Hill, Clapham Junction
London SW11 1SA
United Kingdom

Company Perspectives:

The company's mission it to be Britain's No. 1 authority in menswear.

History of Moss Bros Group Plc

After more than 120 years in business, Moss Bros Group plc remains one of the preeminent names in the United Kingdom's men's fashions retail sector. The company owns and operates a retail network of more than 165 stores across the United Kingdom, selling its own Moss Bros and Cecil Gee brands as well as others, including Hugo Boss, for which it holds the exclusive UK license. Moss Bros' specialty has long been men's suits, especially premium suits--the company is the United Kingdom's leader in the high-end suit segment, with about 30 percent of the market. At the end of the 1990s, Moss Bros made an unsuccessful to extend into the popular casual clothing segment, and in 2002 the company began a restructuring and re-branding program, placing its stores into three primary cateogries: Premium, with nine Hugo Boss stores and 23 Cecil Gee stores; Moss, with 95 stores; and Value, with 37 stores operating primarily as factory outlet stores in out-of-town locations. In addition to its retail sales, Moss Bros is also well-known for its Moss Bros Hire operations, which has long been the leading formalwear rental company in the United Kingdom. Moss Bros Hire operates primarily through the company's retail network, primarily its Moss chain, and hires out more than one million clothing items a year, including military uniforms. Moss is listed on the London Stock Exchange. At the end of 2001 and through much of 2002, Moss Bros faced additional pressure as it became the target of two hostile takeover attempts. However, with 38 percent of the company's shares--and 70 percent of voting rights--held by the Moss and Gee families, the company was able to resist both attempts.

Renting Success in the 19th Century

Moss Bros had its start in 1851 when Moses Moses opened a second-hand clothing shop owned in London. Moses' shop prospered, and he opened a number of other stores in London, assisted by his four sons and added tailor services. In 1881, two of Moses' sons, Alfred and George, opened a new shop in London's Covent Gardens on what was later to become one of the city's main shopping streets, Kings Street. Alfred and George Moses inherited the family business in 1894.

The Moses store might have remained a tiny retail business if not for the predicament of a family friend. Charles Pond had been a stockbroker in London but had lost all of his money and had turned to entertaining at parties in order to survive. Pond needed a dress suit for his engagements and turned to the Moss brothers, who agreed to lend him one of the store's suits on the condition that he pay a small nightly fee and that he return the suit to the store each day for cleaning and pressing.

The idea quickly caught on among London's entertainment world, and the Moses brothers soon found itself with a thriving formalwear rental business. The company quickly built up a reputation not only for its rentals but also for its expertise--particularly in navigating the various dress requirements of British society at the time. In 1898, Alfred and George Moses anglicized their name to Moss and expanded the Kings Street store to include a new rental section. The store then became known as Moss Bros.

At the turn of the century, Moss Bros began collecting military uniforms, and in 1910 added a new military rental and tailoring department. With the outbreak of World War I, the company came under strong demand for new uniforms, especially from the class of commissioned officers being sent up to fight. By then, the brothers had formally incorporated the company, as Moss Bros plc, in 1914.

At the end of the war, Moss Bros continued to expand. The return to peacetime had created a surge in demand for civilian clothing, particularly formalwear. British society was also undergoing vast changes in the social structure, with the rise of a true middle class in the interwar years and the extension of formal occasions beyond the upper classes. By the outbreak of World War II, ceremonial and social occasions requiring formalwear had become common not only for the middle class but also for the working class as well. Moss Bros was by then the country's leading name in formalwear rentals. The company also built up a position as a leading name in the men's suits retails sector.

During World War II, Moss Bros once again became a major provider of military uniforms, including to such noted personalities as the General Montgomery and General Patton. During the postwar boom years, Moss Bros expanded onto a national scale, opening shops throughout the United Kingdom and developing a reputation across the country, to the point where the Moss Bros name became synonymous with formal attire and dress suits.

Merging As a Retail Men's Fashions Group in the 1980s

By the 1980s, Moss Bros had begun a new phase in its growth when it began making a series of acquisitions, starting with the purchase of textiles and clothing specialist Fairdale. In 1987, Moss Bros added another strong brand name when it acquired The Suit Company, which, as its name implied, targeted the retail market for suits and accessories.

Moss Bros next expansion move came in 1988, when the company agreed to merge with another well-known name in British men's fashions, Cecil Gee. That company had been founded in London's Charring Cross Road in 1929 by Cecil Gee, who had quickly revealed himself to be one of the country's most innovative men's clothing specialists, starting with his introduction of the "jacket-shirt" in the 1930s. The return of the British forces after World War II gave the store new success with its "demob" suit, and Cecil Gee opened two new stores to meet the demand.

Another Cecil Gee success came in the 1950s when he began importing Italian-made suits made from lightweight, more comfortable and more versatile fabrics. Among the brand names brought back by Cecil Gee were Canali and Brioni--the latter was the maker of the soon to be famous "James Bond" suit. The success of that suit helped Cecil Gee become a noted leader of men's fashions, attracting such customers as the Beatles to its stores. Cecil Gee also began its own expansion, opening new stores--including a store on Kings Road--and adding such noted men's clothing stores as Savoy Taylors Guild and Beale & Inman.

The merger of Moss Bros and Cecil Gee, by then run by Gee's son Rowland Gee, created the Moss Bros Group, with the Moss and Gee families sharing ownership of the new enterprise. After going public, the two families continued to control the group, with more than 38 percent of its shares and more than 70 percent of the company's voting rights. Rowland Gee was put into place as the group's managing director. Under Gee, the company began developing its strong portfolio of store brands. While Moss Bros was reserved for its formalwear rental operation, retail was segmented among its Cecil Gee, Suit Company, and Savoy Taylors Guild formats, the latter taking over as the company's high-end men's fashions format. The company had also gained the exclusive license to market the Hugo Boss brand in the United Kingdom. By the beginning of the new century, the company operated 17 Hugo Boss stores.

Comeback from Casual in the 2000s

By the mid-1990s, Moss Bros Group had more than 100 stores, more than three-quarters of which also featured Moss Bros Hire shops. The company had begun acquiring more retail brands, including Dormie in 1992. Part of the motivation behind Moss Bros' acquisition drive was the company's desire to extend its retail operations beyond its core of men's suits and into the larger men's fashion sector, particularly into casual fashions. In 1996, the company took a step toward achieving that goal with the acquisition of the 28-store Blazer chain. That company had been founded in the early 1980s, then taken over by the Storehouse group, which also owned the BhS and Mothercare stores.

With its sales rising strongly, along with its market share, Moss Bros began to hone its ambitions, targeting a 15 percent share of the men's suit market in Britain by the end of the decade. The company continued to make gains on the competition, such as Marks & Spencers and the Burton Group, by offering a wide range of high-quality labels. The company added a new label when it acquired the British retail rights to Yves Saint Laurent's men's fashions line. Moss Bros opened its first YSL retail store in June of 1997. Moss Bros was buoyed by what appeared to be a new interest in suits purchases, particularly among the younger men's market segment, as sales rose to £122 million for that year.

By 1999, Moss Bros's retail network had grown to 190 stores, including a growing number of out-of-town discount clothing stores operated under the Brand Centre name. The company was also helped by difficulties at Marks & Spencer's, which controlled 15 percent of the men's suits market as Moss Bros' own share climbed to 13.5 percent. By the end of 1999, the company's sales had risen to nearly £154 million.

Yet Moss Bros' reliance on suits and more formal fashions placed it in an awkward position as the men's fashion market embraced the casual fashion trend. The company found itself all the more hard-pressed as increasing numbers of corporations adopted casual dress codes. Moss Bros scrambled to catch up, restructuring its holdings in 2000 to create a new clothing brand. Called Code, from "Casualwear, Office, Dressing up, and Essentials," the new retail format took over Moss Bros' Savoy Taylors, Blazer, and Suit Company locations. The company ultimately planned to open as many as 80 to 100 Code stores, including the conversion of 50 of its stores existing under other formats. As part of the restructuring, the company also sought to sell off nearly 60 of its under-performing store locations.

Yet the restructuring dragged the company into the red, with losses mounting to £2.7 million on sales of just under £156 million for the 2000 year. Moss Bros turned to a new chairman, Keith Hammill, to help steer the company back into profits. Hammill quickly put an end to the company's casualwear experiment, dropping the Code retail format. The company also named a new CEO, Adrian Wright. By the beginning of 2002, the company had once again focused its operations on its formalwear specialty, realigning its retail network into three main categories: Premium, which included the company's Cecil Gee and Hugo Boss stores; Value, which took over the company's out-of-town locations; and a new store format, Moss, which took over more than 95 of the company's stores and included the Moss Bros Hire rental service.

Moss Bros' difficulties at the turn of the century had caused severe cuts in its stock price, which in turn made the company a takeover target. First up to bat was Shami Ahmed, who had built up a fortune with the Joe Bloggs jeans label. Yet the unified weight of the Gee and Moss families, which continued to control the company's voting rights, enabled the company to resist Ahmed's repeated takeover offers. Soon after Ahmed gave up, in April 2002, a new suitor knocked on Moss Bros' door in the form of Harold Tillman, who had acquired Baird Menswear Brands, which manufactured suits under the Jasper Conran and Pierre Cardin labels, in 2000, and who sought access to Moss Bros' retail network.

Moss Bros fought off Tillman's offer for discussions in June 2002, leading observers to suggest that Tillman would return with a full-fledged takeover bid by the end of the year. Meanwhile, Moss Bros continued its restructuring. By the end of the year, the company had reason for optimism, as men's fashions--and corporate cultures--appeared to swing back toward more conservative clothing. After more than 150 years in business, Moss Bros remained one of the United Kingdom's leading names in suits.

Principal Competitors: Marks and Spencer Group PLC; Arcadia Group plc; Next plc; JJB Sports plc; Burberry Ltd.; Lewis Trust Group Ltd.; Alexon Group PLC; Blacks Leisure Group plc; Sears Ltd.; River Island Clothing Co Ltd.; Peacock Group plc; William Baird PLC; French Connection Group PLC; H and M Hennes Ltd.; Mackays Stores Ltd.; Austin Reed Group PLC; GPS Great Britain Ltd.; Be Wise Group Ltd.; WEW Group plc; Alexandra plc; Gold Group International Ltd.; Liberty PLC; Speciality Retail Group Ltd.

Related information about Moss

A small, spore-bearing, non-vascular plant of the Class Musci, related to liverworts and hornworts. Mat- or cushion-forming, the visible plant is the gametophyte which begins as an undifferentiated body (thallus) or, more usually, a threadlike structure (protonema) reminiscent of a green alga. This develops into the more familiar plant with stems, simple, delicate leaves, and multicellular rhizoids. The sporophyte consists of a stalked capsule containing a central pillar and numerous spores. The capsule matures after the stalk has elongated, and the spores are released via pores, slits or, in some species, explosively. Mosses are found almost everywhere, most often in damp, shady places. However, some species are better able to withstand drying out, and a few even inhabit very dry places such as walls.

otheruses

Mosses are small, soft plants that are typically 1-10 cm tall, occasionally more. They do not have flowers or seeds, and their simple leaves cover the thin wiry stems. At certain times mosses produces spore capsules which may appear as beak-like capsules borne aloft on thin stalks.

Overview

Botanically, mosses are bryophytes, or non-vascular plants. They can be distinguished from the apparently similar liverworts (Marchantiophyta or Hepaticae) by their multi-cellular rhizoids. Other differences are not universal for all mosses and all liverworts, but the presence of clearly differentiated "stem" and "leaves", the lack of deeply lobed or segmented leaves, and the absence of leaves arranged in three ranks, all point to the plant being a moss.

The division Bryophyta formerly included not only mosses, but also liverworts and hornworts. These other two groups of bryophytes now are often placed in their own divisions.

In addition to lacking a vascular system, mosses have a gametophyte-dominant life cycle, i.e. the plant's cells are haploid for most of its life cycle. the diploid body) are short-lived and dependent on the gametophyte. In vascular plants, for example, the haploid generation is represented by the pollen and the ovule, whilst the diploid generation is the familiar flowering plant.

Life cycle

Most kinds of plants have a double portion of chromosomes in their cells (diploid, i.e. each chromosome exists with a partner that contains the same genetic information) whilst mosses (and other bryophytes) have only a single set of chromosomes (haploid, i.e. There are periods in the moss lifecycle when they do have a full, paired set of chromosomes but this is only during the sporophyte stage.

The life of a moss starts from a haploid spore, which germinates to produce a protonema, which is either a mass of filaments or thalloid (flat and thallus-like). The male organs are known as antheridia (singular antheridium) and are enclosed by modified leaves called the perigonium (plural, perigonia).

Mosses can be either dioicous (compare with dioecious in seed plants) or monoicous (compare monoecious). It takes about a quarter to half a year for the sporophyte to mature. The sporophyte body comprises a long stalk, called a seta, and a capsule capped by a cap called the operculum. Within the capsule, spore-producing cells undergo meiosis to form haploid spores, upon which the cycle can start again. This may be absent in some mosses.

In some mosses, green vegetative structures called gemmae are produced on leaves or branches, which can break off and form new plants without the need to go through the cycle of fertilisation. This is a means of asexual reproduction.

Classification of mosses

Mosses were traditionally grouped with the liverworts and hornworts in the Division Bryophyta (bryophytes), within which the mosses made up the class Musci. This group, however, is paraphyletic and now tends to be split up. They appear to be the closest living relatives of the vascular plants.

The mosses are grouped as a single class, now named Bryopsida, and divided into seven subclasses:

Andreaeidae
Sphagnidae
Tetraphidae
Polytrichidae
Buxbaumiidae
Bryidae
Archidiidae

Andreaeidae are distinguished by the biseriate (two rows of cells) rhizoids, multiseriate (many rows of cells) protonema, and sporangium that splits along longitudinal lines. They differ from other mosses in other details of their development and anatomy too, and can also become larger than most other mosses, with e.g.

The Archidiidae are distinguished by their extremely large spores and the way the sporangium develops.

Habitat

Mosses are found chiefly in areas of low light and dampness; Such aquatic or semi-aquatic mosses can greatly exceed the normal range of lengths seen in terestial mosses.

Wherever they occur, mosses require moisture to survive because of the small size and thinness of tissues, lack of cuticle (waxy covering to prevent water loss), and the need for liquid water to complete fertilisation. Some mosses can survive desiccation, returning to life within a few hours of rehydration.

In northern latitudes, the north side of trees and rocks will generally have more moss on average than other sides.

Cultivation

Moss is considered a weed in grass lawns, but is deliberately encouraged to grow under aesthetic principles exemplified by Japanese gardening. However, specific species of moss can be extremely difficult to maintain away from their natural sites with their unique combinations of light, humidity, shelter from wind, etc.

Growing moss from spores is even less controlled. those surfaces which are hospitable to a certain species of moss will typically be colonised by that moss within a few years of exposure to wind and rain. Materials which are porous and moisture retentive, such as brick, wood, and certain coarse concrete mixtures are hospitable to moss. Surfaces can also be prepared with acidic substances, including buttermilk, yogurt, urine, and gently pur辿ed mixtures of moss samples, water and ericaceous compost. The uses for intact moss are principally in the florist trade and for home decoration. Decaying moss in the genus Sphagnum is also the major component of peat, which is "mined" for use as a fuel, as a horticultural soil additive, and in smoking malt in the production of Scotch whisky. In World War II, Sphagnum mosses were used as first-aid dressings on soldiers' wounds, as these mosses are highly absorbant and have mild antibacterial properties. Some early people used it as a diaper due to its high absorbency.

In rural UK, Fontinalis antipyretica was traditionally used to extinguish fires as it could be found in substantial quantities in slow-moving rivers and the moss retained large volumes of water which helped extinguish the flames. This historical use is reflected in its specific Latin/Greek name, the approximate meaning of which is "against fire".

In Finland peat mosses have been used to make bread during famines.

Chronology

Key Dates:
1851: Moses Moses sets up a second-hand clothing shop in London.
1894: Moses' sons Albert and George take over the business.
1898: The company becomes the first to offer formalwear rentals; the Moses' brothers changes their name to Moss, and the company adopts Moss Bros signage.
1914: The firm incorporates as Moss Bros plc.
1929: Cecil Gee opens a men's clothing store in London.
1982: Moss Bros acquires Fairdale clothing company.
1987: The company acquires The Suit Company retail chain.
1988: Moss Bros merges with Cecil Gee to form Moss Bros Group.
1996: The firm acquires Blazer retail group.
1997: Moss Bros launches Yves Saint Laurent men's clothing retail store branch.
2001: The company converts The Suit Company, Blazer, and Savoy Taylors Guild retail formats into new casual format, Code.
2002: Moss Bros abandons Code format and restructures most of its stores into new Moss format.

Additional topics

Company HistoryClothing Stores

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