It’s been accused of being smug, sneered at for selling “anti-fashion” and even described as a “middle-class cult” – despite only opening a single shop – but now the clothing brand Boden could be coming to a high street near you. The mail-order clothes firm is following in the footsteps of brands such as the White Company and the Cambridge Satchel Company by moving from the web to physical stores. A spokeswoman this week said the brand is planning to open a string of shops in the UK and US for its 1.6 million active customers, after the success of its first permanent outlet in Hanger Green, west London.
Since it launched in 1991, Boden has been adored and scoffed at in equal – if surprisingly intense – measure. Fashion writers soon realised that the cheerful, if not cheap, clothes were being snapped up by time-poor consumers who wanted to avoid going into stores – and anything that looked too fashionable. One journalist pinpointed the appeal of Boden as not having to go to “scary shops staffed by skinny teenagers to buy any of it”.
Fans of its catalogue and later website loved the sun-drenched images it presented – often of rosy-cheeked children running through sand dunes or hills – so much, there were even Mumsnet discussions about where the capital of Boden-land would be (Padstow or St Albans, apparently). David Cameron and Boris Johnson were pictured wearing the company’s swimming trunks, instantly sparking a new stereotype, Boden man. Then in 2012 came a backlash against the “Boden brigade” as the “velvet-trimmed, braying, living embodiment of Middle England”. Yet the company, founded by former Bullingdon club member Johnnie Boden, kept expanding, moving online and breaking into the French and US markets.
So, when other fashion stores are scrambling to improve their websites, will the move to physical stores put off Boden’s loyal consumers? Richard Perks, director of retail research at market analysts Mintel, says that, while it is not a move many fashion sites are making, it still “makes a hell of a lot of sense”.
“Stores are great marketing. If you have a shop, people pass it every day,” he says. “To me, the whole multichannel way of selling is the right way forward – it lets your customers buy from you in the way that suits them best.” Which, in a sense, has always been the secret of the brand’s success.
