While TM Lewin’s strategy since the City heyday of the ’80s and ’90s has focused on price – keeping its shirts consistently at the £20 mark and offering customers never-ending deals – Thomas Pink remained at the higher price point, charging about £125 to £140 for its shirts.Īfter LVMH bought into the company in 1999, the brand adapted well to online retail and consistently posted profits in the early 2010s, even after the global financial crisis.Ĭracks began to show in 2017 when the brand experienced a high turnover in staff. Shirt maker TM Lewin was another casualty of the crisis, closing 66 UK shops in July and laying off 700 workers as it took the brand online to cut costs. That market has almost completely ground to a halt,” he says. “Several things hurt Thomas Pink in the last few years but Covid meant people are simply not buying small office shirts. With most of the company’s operations taking place since Covid-19 started, Mr Bayley has relied on online sales and pop-up shops during lockdown-free periods to keep the brand on track. “But we were aiming for a lower price point, because the higher the price you go to, the fewer sales there are.”įleet London focuses on two products, £70 shirts with a breast pocket and button collar and £25 slimline men’s underwear – both made from lightweight, sustainable cotton. “When we were setting up, Thomas Pink and Hackett were our two benchmarks in terms of the combination of quality and informality in some of the casual shirts,” he says. Mr Bayley, who set up shirt-making brand Fleet London in the fourth quarter of 2019, says he bought from Thomas Pink as recently as 2018 and used the company as a blueprint for his own brand. Former investment banker Richard Bayley, founder of shirtmaker Fleet London, used to wear Thomas Pink shirts in his City days. While his preference in the 1980s was for TM Lewin’s £20 shirts, he migrated onto the higher-end Thomas Pink shirts in the 1990s, wearing them until he quit the City in 2007. While high-flying bankers still favoured the more expensive suits Savile Row tailors dish out for thousands of pounds, there was growing demand from more modestly salaried professionals for the mid-market options supplied by Thomas Pink and its rivals Moss Bros and TM Lewin.įormer investment banker turned shirt maker Richard Bayley, 61, remembers the days well. “We have some things to iron out and button up but will be back soon with an improved website to offer you the highest quality English shirting made for modern life that you have come to know and love,” Thomas Pink’s website states.įounded in 1984 by three Irish brothers – James, Peter and John Mullen – Pink became a City staple as financiers snapped up its brightly coloured shirts that offered the perfect price point between high street and London’s tailoring shops on Savile Row.
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