Rubicon Retail was a British retail group that traded between 2002 and 2006.
The firm was formed in 2002 when a management buyout of several firms then owned by Arcadia Group took place. This resulted in high street chains Warehouse and Principles, and catalogue retailers Hawkshead and Racing Green, being transferred from Arcadia to Rubicon. Warehouse had been part of Arcadia since 1999, having previously been part of Sears plc, and Principles had been founded by Arcadia's predecessor Burton Group in 1984.
During its lifetime, Rubicon sold off Hawkshead and Racing Green and purchased the Shoe Studio Group, which operated from a series of upmarket shoe retail stores.
In 2006, Rubicon was taken over by Mosaic Fashions, owner of the Karen Millen, Whistles, Oasis, and Coast chains. In 2009, following the collapse of Mosaic, Warehouse ended up in the hands of Mosaic's successor, Aurora Fashions, with Principles ultimately being bought out by Debenhams, which had been part of the same company as Principles (the pre-Arcadia Burton Group) between 1984 and 1998 and had several Principles concessions in its stores.
Related Research Articles
Iceland Foods Ltd, trading as Iceland, is a British supermarket chain headquartered in Deeside, Wales. It mainly sells frozen foods, including prepared meals and vegetables, alongside non-frozen grocery items such as produce, meat, dairy and dry goods. The company also operates a chain of shops called The Food Warehouse.
Sir Philip Nigel Ross Green is a British businessman who was the chairman of the retail company Arcadia Group. He owned the high street clothing retailers Topshop, Topman, and Miss Selfridge from 2002 to 2020. In May 2023, his net worth was estimated by the Sunday Times Rich List to be £910 million.
TOPSHOP is a British fashion brand for women's clothing, shoes and accessories. It was part of the Arcadia Group, controlled by Sir Philip Green, but went into administration in late 2020 before being purchased by ASOS on 1 February 2021. It now operates via the ASOS website and app, as well as being sold in Nordstrom stores in the US on Nordstrom.com. TOPSHOP previously had around 510 shops worldwide.
British Home Stores, commonly abbreviated to BHS and latterly legally styled BHS Ltd, was a British department store chain, primarily selling clothing and household items. In its later years, the company began to expand into furniture, electronics, entertainment, convenience groceries and fragrance and beauty products.
GUS plc was a FTSE 100 retailing, manufacturing and financial conglomerate based in the United Kingdom. GUS was an abbreviation of Great Universal Stores, the company's name before 2001, while it was also known as the Glorious Gussies amongst stockbrokers. The company started out as Universal Stores, a mail order business created by the Rose family. In 1931, Isaac Wolfson joined the mail order company and would, through a series of takeovers, turn it into a retail, manufacturing and financial conglomerate, becoming Europe's biggest mail order firm and with over 2,700 physical stores. His son, Leonard Wolfson, followed him as chairman, to be succeeded by his nephews David Wolfson (1996–2000) and Victor Barnett (2000–2002). During the 1980s, the business divested much of its physical retail and manufacturing subsidiaries under Leonard Wolfson to concentrate on mail order, property and finance. In October 2006, the company was split into two separate companies: Experian which continues to exist, and Home Retail Group which was bought by Sainsbury's in 2016.
Arcadia Group Ltd was a British multinational retailing company headquartered in London, England. It was best known for being the previous parent company of British Home Stores (BHS), Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Debenhams, Evans, Miss Selfridge, Topman, Topshop, Wallis and Warehouse. At its peak, the group had more than 2,500 outlets in the UK and concessions in UK department stores and several hundred franchises operated internationally.
Burton is a British online clothing retailer and former high street retailer specialising in men's clothing and footwear. The company was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index, but became a trading name of Arcadia Group Brands Ltd, part of the Arcadia Group. Sir Philip Green acquired the Arcadia Group in 2002, and it became the sole owner of Burton. In 2021, Boohoo.com acquired the brand after Arcadia went into administration.
Pay 'n Save was a retail company founded by Monte Lafayette Bean in Seattle, Washington, in 1940. Over the years, Pay 'n Save was the leading drugstore chain in Washington and was the owner of several Washington-based retailers, including Lamonts and Ernst. A 1984 sale of the company to The Trump Group and a 1986 attempt to transform the retailer into a bargain-basement merchandiser resulted in a loss of nearly $50 million. By 1988, Pay 'n Save was sold to Thrifty Corporation, who later sold the stores to PayLess Drug, who retired the Pay 'n Save name. As a result, most of the retailer's divisions were spun off as separate companies or shuttered. As of 2023, Pay 'n Save's membership discount chain, Bi-Mart, is the sole surviving division of the company.
Jane Elizabeth Shepherdson CBE is an English businesswoman. As of 2016 she was the chief executive of UK clothing brand Whistles, and had been the brand director for high-street women's wear store TopShop.
Miss Selfridge is a British fashion brand and former high street store chain which began as the young fashion section of Selfridges department store in London in 1966. It was part of the Arcadia Group, controlled by Sir Philip Green, which went into administration in late 2020. The Miss Selfridge brand was purchased by ASOS on 1 February 2021 and now operates exclusively online.
Topman is a UK-based multinational men's fashion retail brand founded by Burton Group in 1978. Along with its women's clothing counterpart Topshop and the rest of Arcadia Group, Topman went into administration in late 2020. All high street stores subsequently closed and the brand was purchased by ASOS on 1 February 2021, relaunching as an online-only retailer.
Richard Shops was a British high street retailer of women's fashion.
Sears plc was a large British-based conglomerate. The company was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It was acquired by Philip Green in 1999.
Mosaic Fashions hf was a holding company listed on the Icelandic stock exchange that owned several fashion brands. At its peak it had over 2,000 stores worldwide, as concessions, franchises and joint venture stores.
Principles was a UK-based fashion retailer founded in 1984.
Cristina Stuart Green, Lady Green, known as Tina Green, is an English businesswoman and interior designer. Green is the director of Taveta, the majority owner of Taveta Investments Ltd, the parent company of the Arcadia Group, of which her husband, Sir Philip Green, is chairman. The Arcadia Group owned the clothing retail chains Topshop and Topman, as well as Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Evans, Miss Selfridge, Outfit, and Wallis. Taveta owned British Homes Stores (BHS) before its 2015 sale. BHS was placed into administration in 2016, and the Arcadia Group was placed into administration in 2020. Green formed the interior design company Green & Mingarelli with the Italian designer Pietro Mingarelli.
Donald McCarthy, was a British entrepreneur and philanthropist. He was most known for having been the chairman of House of Fraser.
Clipper Logistics plc is a retail logistics company based in Leeds which serves retailers selling fashion, tobacco, alcohol and other high-value goods in the UK and Europe. It has 47 sites across Europe. The company was listed on the London Stock Exchange until it was acquired by GXO Logistics in May 2022.
Retailing in New Zealand is an important sector in the economy of New Zealand, as a channel for a large proportion of household spending and international visitor spending.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
