TieRack banks on the Italian flair

NECKWEAR retailer TieRack is banking on the Italian flair for style as it undergoes a corporate makeover aimed at broadening its appeal as an accessories chain for men and women.

The group, acquired in 1999 by family-owned Italian textile company Frangi, is kicking off a major store revamp to put back some of the sparkle it has lost over the past few years.

The revamp, costing more than £4m over the next two years, will be rolled out gradually across the 330-store chain, starting with 130 stores in Britain, including 37 located within the M25 radius.

Its London flagship in Oxford Street has already received the full treatment after extensive trials ordered by Simone Frangi, the group's 35-year-old chairman, as part of a long-term recovery strategy.

'We have tried to make the stores less masculine. They had lacked oomph and as a result our customer profile was ageing with the brand,' Frangi said. Certainly, the shop now looks less cluttered with less space for ties and a bigger selection of products for women, including trendy woollen scarves, bags and fashion jewellery.

Frangi has also tried to latch on to the latest craze for photo bags - personalised shopping bags with a photo-image of the customer's choice printed on them. He confidently predicts these will be a big item at Christmas.

The TieRack name is being retained by the family design label - Frangi - but is prominent on the products and shop fronts. That is no surprise as the Italian company was a maker of silk ties and scarves and a supplier to TieRack long before it acquired the group.

From a base in the northern Italian city of Como, the Frangi group also supplies many of the world's biggest fashion houses and designers with its silkprinted fabrics. With 100,000 designs in its archives, Simone felt that vertical integration with a retail outlet would make a winning combination.

It WAS a big risk to stump up £24m for TieRack after it stunned the London stock market with a £9m loss. This was at the height of the dotcom boom when many pundits were predicting the death of High Street shopping at the hands of the internet. Nor did the family have any experience of running a retail empire.

Frangi says he may have been the first Italian entrepreneur to acquire a quoted British business in 20 years. Interestingly, just five months after his purchase, Italian fashion house Prada snapped up an icon of British style, shoemaker Church & Co.

Within two years, the Frangi touch helped return TieRack to profit. It has since struggled to grow further, partly because of the impact of 11 September. However, it delivered a profit of £1.8m on sales of £81m in the year to 31 January. Now Frangi is driving the group forward with a new strategy to attract more customers, particularly younger ones.

'It's all about revitalising the brand,' he says. 'That goal has led me to scour far and wide for the latest fashions.' The group now sources bead bags from India as well as woollens from Scotland and even upmarket ties made in England.

Some experts remain sceptical that TieRack can recapture its former glory, even though founder Roy Bishko has remained with the group as part of a senior management team which has been incentivised with a 20% equity stake in the business.

They question whether TieRack, lumbering under a brand name that identifies with a niche product, can recapture its past. But specialist retailers have been making a comeback in recent years. Chains such as Accessorize, part of Monsoon, and Claire's Accessories have shown that bits and pieces retailers can be successful. It looks as if this Italian job is unlikely to be botched.