Kicking French Connection’s tyres

What I looked at today

French Connection is an iconic fashion brand, and member of the Thrifty 30 portfolio. The shares are dirt cheap, which implies the brand has little value. Surely it isn’t so…

You might argue we know all we need to know from the company’s financial statements. It’s struggling to make a profit so its fashions probably aren’t as popular as they were. The story is more nuanced than that though. In fact the financial statements tell two stories. French Connection’s troubles are, at least in part, down to the cost of renting its shops. Rents are high, but the the popularity of the high street as a destination for shoppers in general is falling. The wholesale business, which sells to other retailers (including online, and overseas) is faring much better.

So how to kick French Connection’s tyres? I occasionally ask people I know what they think of brands I’m interested in, but that is a very small sample.

Listening to 6 Music as I worked yesterday morning I discovered a way to broaden that sample. Lauren Laverne interviewed Poppy Dinsey, a 24 year old girl living in Surrey and founder of What I Wore Today.

At What I Wore Today members upload photographs of what they’re wearing, and tag the brands (and the wearer’s location and mood).  It’s rather brilliant.

There’s a brand directory (scroll down this page), and each brand has a page. French Connection‘s shows us the outfits Karaliene in Manchester and Mkaur in Hertfordshire are wearing, how many readers have tagged the outfit as a favourite, and what they think of it.

In total WIWT members have photographed 179 outfits including French Connection items and the brand has one ‘fan’.

In comparison, Topshop is #1. It has 92 fans and features in 3,115 outfits. Internet favourite ASOS (which also retails other brands) is #7 (58 fans, 986 outfits).

Direct comparisons are unfair as the top 10 is mostly cut price brands like Primark and giants like Next, while French Connection is upmarket and pricier. Hollister, a favourite of my daughter, only has one fan, and Monsoon has two, so maybe all WIWT is telling me is that there are a lot of brands and the bigger, cheaper, ones are more popular.

Rather than parade my ignorance of fashion any more, I’ll return occasionally to WIWT to see whether French Connection is moving up in the estimation of its members.