- Sales of flagship brand Super Facialist increase 50 per cent.
- Planned relaunches of five brands.
- Investment in online platform to showcase brands
Aim-traded beauty brands business Brand Architekts (BAR:160p) should be a major winner as national lockdown restrictions are lifted. The fact that the company traded profitably in the second half of 2020 – underlying pre-tax profit only dipped £200,000 to £710,000 on 10 per cent lower revenue of £9m – was quite some achievement given that lower sales of Christmas gifts accounted for £600,000 of the revenue shortfall, and non-gift sales to high street retailers (closed due to the lockdown) declined by £800,000.
Revenue from Boots (13 per cent of total sales) dropped by a third, but as high street stores re-open in the coming weeks expect a strong bounce back. Not even Scrooge would cancel Christmas two years running, so expect gift sales to recover in the autumn. It’s also worth pointing out that the main reason international revenue reversed from £1.5m to £0.9m was due to Covid-19 government enforced lockdowns at TK Max stores in North America. The vaccine roll-outs in U.S.A. and Canada are well ahead of Europe, as are both country’s economic recoveries, factors which augur well for the future.