
Floral dresses from Nobody’s Child, jumpsuits from Sosandar, crew-neck jumpers from Crew Clothing, Seasalt T-shirts and Dune London’s leather sandals – now all under one roof. Or under one domain, for those preferring to shop online.
With brand diversity across fashion retail reminiscent of department stores of the past such as Debenhams and BHS, high street retailers including John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, Next and even Sainsbury’s are looking to attract consumers with an expansive range of third-party brands.
A recruitment drive demonstrates the direction retailers are taking. In June 2022, Reiss hired a new head of buying to oversee third-party expansion, while earlier this year, Marks & Spencer appointed Amazon Fashion general manager Nishi Mahajan as replacement for Neil Harrison – who left in December 2022 – as director of third-party brands.
On 8 February 2023, Next appointed former managing director at Next-owned Lipsy Jeremy Stakol as executive director for Next’s group investments, acquisitions and third-party brands – a role he took up at the start of April.
Third-party brands may offer consumers more choice, but also pose a risk.
One such risk is the cannibalisation of sales of the retailer’s in-house brand, Retail Economics analyst Josh Holmes tells Drapers: “Retailers must ensure that their selection of third-party brands enhances their core offering rather than detracting from it.
Seasalt spring/summer 23
“Retailers must prioritise a customer-centric, thoughtfully curated third-party offering that resonates with their target audience and stays true to their own brand values, while also ensuring that their own brand and experience remains distinct and desirable through continued investment.”
Next is a case in point. The retailer sells around 1,000 third-party fashion, beauty and home brands through its ecommerce site, including women’s and men’s wear from Albaray, Superdry, River Island and Yours Clothing. Total third-party sales for the year to 31 January 2023 rose 12% year on year to £869m. However, Next’s own-brand sales declined 10% year on year to £1.22bn.
Customer data and insights from previous third-party partnerships could be central to improving own-brand offerings by “helping to refine its product development and marketing strategies”, Holmes advises.
GlobalData apparel analyst Pippa Stephens agrees Next “must regularly review its ranges to minimise repetitions, especially across basic and essential product lines. Ensuring that each brand has its own distinct image will also provide greater differentiation across the retailers’ offerings and help own-label products to stand out”.
In the last two years M&S has grown its third-party roster to 60 labels, including womenswear brands Nobody’s Child and Ghost, but admits to “curating the right partners to complement and enhance [its] core offer”.
A spokesman tells Drapers: “It’s no secret that our brands platform has grown at pace. The competitive advantage of our omnichannel platform, store network and substantial customer data and engagement through [M&S customer reward scheme] Sparks, which now has around 16 million members, has made us an increasingly attractive partner to third-party brands.
“However, as much as it’s an opportunity, it takes time to get right. From global brands to small start-ups, we’ve learnt there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach, and we continue to test and learn.
“Despite being a business that’s been around for nearly 140 years, Brands at M&S is still in its infancy, and we must remain agile and continue to evolve in response – and get ahead of – our customers’ needs.”
Homogenisation hazard
Another risk for retailers expanding their third-party brand offerings is competitors that already stock the same fashion labels leading to little, or no, differential in offerings.
In January, womenswear brand Sosandar marked its first foray into in-store retail under the auspices of Sainsbury’s, which will stock the Cheshire-based label online and in a selection of its 600 full-line stores later this year.
However, will this in-store exclusivity be enough to deter consumers from opting to buy from Sosandar’s online stockists John Lewis, M&S, Next, The Very Group and JD Williams – albeit that each stocks different product.
Sosandar co-CEOs Ali Hall and Julie Lavington, who co-founded the brand in 2016, tells Drapers that they collaborate with their stockists “to decide what range they sell”: “This is based on a combination of our own bestsellers, brand new products that we/they think will resonate with their customers.”
The strategy seems to be working: for the year to 31 March 2023, Sosandar went into the black for the first time with a pre-tax profit of £1.6m, after a loss of £600,000 the previous year.
Another label tailoring its assortment retailer by retailer is British clothing and lifestyle brand Crew Clothing, which has more than 100 standalone stores and is sold online by John Lewis, Next, Very and most recently – since 1 March – M&S. The brand’s CEO David Butler tells Drapers that the third-party partnerships have allowed Crew Clothing to increase its “high street presence and brand awareness”. The stockists, in turn, benefit from a products that are “tailored to [the] partners’ customer base” based on their specific consumer demographic.
“Each [collection] will vary accordingly,” says Butler.
A level of exclusivity to a chosen retailer can bolster individuality in the competitive third-party market, as shown by womenswear brand Nobody’s Child, which has created what it says are exclusive offerings for its investor, M&S.
“Our summer dresses have been hugely successful with M&S, so we have designed into exclusive prints and shapes for it,” states Nobody’s Child CEO Jody Plows.
This has not affected Nobody’s Child’s relations with its other partners, Next and John Lewis, the latter of which started stocking the brand in February 2022. Over the last 12 months, John Lewis has introduced a total of 109 third-party fashion brands, leading to its “most successful year for fashion sales” yet.

Nobody’s Child exclusive prints for Marks & Spencer
With a 13.7% year-on-year rise in sales, John Lewis head of fashion brands Beth Pettet tells Drapers that despite heavy losses in its annual results – of £234m for the year to 28 January 2023 – the retailer has no plans of winding down its third-party expansion: “We realise the importance of nurturing smaller independent brands such as Armor Lux and Aubin & Wills, and we want to use our expertise in this area to support more brands and encourage the wider industry to follow suit.”
M&S has no plans to concede in the battle of third-party brands: “‘Brands at M&S’ is a key part of our strategy,” says the retailer’s spokesman. “Launched just over two years ago, it is now home to more than 60 third-party brand partners, operating through a range of models – from exclusive collaborations to brands we have invested in, like Nobody’s Child.”
Any potential slowdown could instead come from the brands themselves as they look to potentially streamline their stockist count, warns retail analyst Richard Hyman: “For the brand, you don’t want every Tom, Dick and Harry selling your products because there’s an element of exclusivity in every clothing label.
“If the customers, instead of buying from them directly, are going to buy from a third party, then they will have a lower margin because they’re sharing some of that with the retailer. This is not some kind of magic silver bullet – it can be damaging. Everyone is on margin pressure and this is not necessarily the solution.”
Next’s results for the year to to 31 January 2023 showed the profit margin for its third-party brands stood at 12.4%, which is the percentage of sales that goes to the retailer.
Holmes, however, is positive about the evolution of such partnerships: “The relationship between third-party brands and retailers is becoming more collaborative and mutually beneficial, as the rise of online and direct-to-consumer channels gives brands more power and options, and retailers need to adapt to stay relevant.
“This shift has resulted in more favourable terms for third-party brands than under a legacy department store model, and retailers are now offering greater value to these brands to entice them to work together,” he says.
The third-party brand offerings among retailers help has revived a multi-brand clothing department store model that has faded from the UK’s high streets in recent years, but has returned in a more modern-suited form with the help of combining brand variety in both online and in-store channels alike.
Although the post-lockdown resurgence of bricks-and-mortar shopping has driven the appetite for in-store experiences, customers are still looking for a wide product range from a roster of different brands – a signature of ecommerce pureplays such as Asos and Zalando. Both etailers’ sales soared during pandemic lockdowns, but they have since suffered: Asos reported a 8% drop in UK sales and a 3% drop in group revenues in the four months to 31 December 2022, while Zalando’s full-year net income for the year to 31 December 2022, plummeted by 92.8% to €16.8m (£14.9m) year on year.
In the meantime, sales of third-party clothing and footwear brands at M&S – which offers both online shopping and a department store-like physical shopping experience – more than doubled to over £70m in the six months to October 2022, driven by a 18.8% year on year increase in in-store sales.
Crew Clothing’s Butler says that the fashion retail industry is “starting to see a [consumer] demand for more modern and curated ranges under one roof, and the opportunity to touch and feel the product before purchase”.
“Customers are now looking for experiences and frictionless, streamlined shopping – it’s about providing the ease of online shopping in physical form,” he adds.