Sosandar Plc

Hello, everyone, and thank you very much for joining us today. We are delighted to be presenting a great set of results and also to talk to you about the exciting year ahead. So just to run through the agenda, first of all, for the presentation, we're going to start off with the full year results to the end of March 23. I'll give a top line overview and Steve will go through the key details of the financials. And then in the second half of the presentation, Ali and I are going to talk through our growth strategy for this year and beyond. So first of all, we'd just like to take a moment to look back on the Susanda growth journey. This graph shows annual revenue over the last six years. We've had consistent growth every single year, going from a million pounds of turnover in 2018 to 42 and a half million turnover last year, all set against the most extraordinary backdrop of multiple external challenges from Brexit, to the pandemic to war in ukraine spiraling inflation and of course the cost of living crisis And as well as sustained growth in revenue since we launched, in the last two years alone, we've increased revenue by 30 million pounds and become profitable. So we've built an entirely new brand, we've disrupted the market, and we've captured the loyalty of an underserved audience, both direct to consumer on our own website and with some of the UK's biggest retailers. Just to go on to last year, last year was a fantastic year. We had our first full year of profitability and we had substantial profit of £1.6 million. Our revenue grew by 13 and a half million to 42 and a half million, which was up 44% year on year. Our business is thriving on every single channel that we sell through. All categories are selling well, including our new fast track categories, such as smart tailoring, swim and beach and occasion wear. and we successfully completed an equity raise of £5.5 million in February. We were delighted by the support from both new and existing investors in what was an oversubscribed process. The additional working capital will support the execution of concurrent new initiatives and in particular the launch in store with Sainsbury's in September. And we've also laid really strong foundations to achieve our ambition, which is to become one of the biggest fashion brands in the world. So I'll now pass over to Steve to go through the financials in more detail.

Thanks, Julie. Good afternoon, everybody. So starting with our net revenue, which, as Julie rightly says, was 42 and a half million, up 44 percent on last year and up 30 million compared to just two years ago. This substantial growth reflects the ever-growing demand for Susanda product with incredibly strong performance from both susanda.com and through third-party web platforms. Revenue each quarter increased during the year with Q1, Q2 and Q3 setting new all-time records, even the traditionally quieter Q4 being strong with the month of March being 32% up on the previous year. The profit before tax number was 1.6 million and FY23 really was a milestone year, being our first full year of profitability with a substantial positive swing of 2.2 million compared to last year. Scale, ongoing margin and overhead efficiencies have all contributed to this performance. Moving on to our gross margin, which improved 15 basis points to 56.2%. The improvement compared with the prior year has been delivered whilst also increasing the proportion of revenue from the lower gross margin wholesale channel and the weakening of sterling against the dollar, which had some impact in the latter part of the year. In terms of the wholesale channel, we now have three partners, which are the very group, M.Brown, and Mulatterley Sainsbury's, which we launched in March 23, initially on their website, ahead of a bricks and mortar launch during FY24. We continue to take many actions to deliver benefit in gross margin, including some targeted price increases, improved supplier cost prices, and further efficiencies in inbound freight costs. There is more potential to further improve the gross margin that we deliver. with our target to deliver 60% on a like-for-like basis, although the actual margin that we report will be dependent on the channel mix, in particular the proportion of the wholesale business. In terms of our overhead, our total admin expense increased by 30% to 22.2 million in the year, and that compares to a 44% increase in revenue. As a result, admin expenses as a percentage of revenue reduced to 52% compared to 58% in the previous year, reflecting the benefit scale whilst continuing to invest in all areas of the business to drive sustained growth in revenue and all KPIs. Our revenue growth, coupled with the slight step up in gross margin and significant drop in overhead percentage, has driven the move to profitability. So looking at our overheads in more detail, on the left-hand chart is the absolute spend that we've incurred on our overheads and broken down by type of spend. And on the right-hand side is the same spend set as a percent of revenue. Our spend on marketing, which is in gray on the charts, continue to follow a similar strategy to the previous year, with focus on TV, social and brochures, with peak months of investment being where the return on investment is at its greatest. Overall, spend increased by 3% year on year, resulting in a significant drop as a percent of revenue, with the cost of customer acquisition remaining below £20, which we are really pleased with. The cost of fulfilment, which is lighter blue on the charts, increased by 26% compared to the previous year. This includes warehousing and customer order delivery costs. From a warehousing perspective, our 3PL partner, GXO, formerly Clipper, have continued to deliver for our multi-channel customers and have adapted the operation to manage bulk order wholesale customers in addition to our traditional B2C demand. In quarter four, we onboarded Every as an additional customer delivery partner in addition to Royal Mail in order to give the customer greater choice. This has also helped reduce our average cost of delivery, which will yield greater benefit in FY24. The largest increase in admin expenses is from third-party commissions, which is dark blue on the charts. This increased by 59%. and reflects the growth in revenue through our concession partners, who are John Lewis, Next, and Marks & Spencer. The commission is retained by the concession partner and is reported within our overheads, covering all costs of the operation, including warehouse and fulfillment, returns handling, marketing, and other operational costs. The revenue and gross profit figures that we report are therefore undiluted when compared to trading through susanda.com. Our other admin expense, which is the gold section on the charts, includes our staff cost, which increased by 52% compared to the previous year. Our headcount increased by 24 during the year to an average of 73, with a closing headcount still of only 85 as of March 23. The investment in people has been across all functions of the business and has included pivotal roles to equip us to deliver the growth plans in FY24. Key roles that we have hired in the year were an e-commerce director, a commercial international director, a head of operations and a head of people. All KPIs on our own website have continued to improve year on year. Visits to our own site increased 15% to 15.1 million, and our conversion continued to rise to an average of 4.1% for the year, up by over 30% compared with FY21. Our average order value for the year was £97, up 8% year on year, and our customers continued to shop more and more frequently, with our average order frequency across all customers increasing to 2.34 times per annum. On our own site, the total number of orders has more than doubled in the last two years with 22% more orders being generated last year compared with FY22. A total of 621,000 orders were taken with both repeat customer and new customers both increasing. Our average units per order has continued to rise with the average for last year being 2.1, up from 1.9 last year, which is a reflection of the product choice for our customer has, and the continued availability of new products, which results in customers coming back to the site frequently throughout the year. The really important metric of marketing cost per order has continued to drop, with last year being just below £6, compared with £9 two years ago. Brand awareness is now much greater and our constant review of everything that we do to optimize the return on our spend. So in summary, our income statement for the last three years is shown here. So revenue of 42 and a half million, which is 44% up year on year and up by 30 million since FY21. This substantial increase in revenue has enabled us to deliver our first full year of profitability with a PBT of 1.6 million. And finally, here's the balance sheet. As at the 31st of March, 23, we had net assets of 18.4 million compared to 10.6 million a year previous and a net current asset position of 17.2 million. During the year, our financial position was further strengthened with an equity raise of 5.5 million net in February, which is enabling us to accelerate concurrent growth initiatives, including our rollout into stores through the wholesale arrangement that we have with Sainsbury's. It will also allow us to take advantage of the many opportunities that we have, which Julie and Ali will talk through in later slides. The strength of our balance sheet includes a cash balance at the year end of 10.6 million, and we have no bank indebtedness. This position is allowing us to invest in inventory to support all sales channels, whilst also investing in people, technology and operations to ensure the trajectory of growth can be delivered. We've continued to invest in stock during the year, with the balance at the year end being 12.4 million. This includes stock in the main warehouse, at our concession partners, as well as stock in transit, which reflects the higher proportion of supply coming to the UK via sea freight. In addition, our stock figure also includes an increase in the right to return asset, which covers post-year end return stock. Trade and other payables increased to 8.4 million compared to 6.8 million in the previous year, which just reflects the increase in business scale. Credit to payment days have continued to move favorably as the group becomes an ever more important and trusted customer for our supply partners. Credit insurance is now being made available as a result of our sustained financial performance over the last 18 months. Included in this increase is the provision for post year end customer refunds for orders fulfilled within the financial year. This increase is 0.6 million and just reflects the year on year increase in revenue. Trade and other receivables increased to 2.7 million from 2.5 million in the previous year. This includes amounts owing from concession and wholesale customers. No change to payment terms have been made during the year and all payments have been received on time and in full. We have delivered sustained growth over many years and have delivered strong financial performance. We are really well placed to continue our growth trajectory in FY24 and beyond. And on that note, I will pass to Ali.

Thanks Steve. Afternoon everyone. So now we want to come on and talk about the key priorities for Susanda going forward for this year and the foundations we're laying for the years beyond. This is a pivotal year for Susanda because we have so many major new initiatives and developments to drive and deliver our next stage of growth. Today we're sharing five of these initiatives. In due course we will share other ones we're working on too. The overriding thing we want to communicate is that we are a brand in demand in both the UK and abroad. The world is our oyster and we fully intend to become one of the world's biggest fashion brands. So we're going to talk about these initiatives in detail, but just let me summarise the five things that we're looking at for long term growth. So product, firstly and most importantly, we continue to constantly innovate our product range as we are nothing without great product. We are also doing a large scale optimization of our direct to consumer business through sasanda.com. We are expanding routes to market online in the UK and also through bricks and mortar initiatives and also international expansion, which is incredibly exciting and continues to move forward. So we are expanding every single area of the business, whether it's our direct to consumer business or a third party business, as well as looking at whole new routes to market. Before we go on to talk about expansion of routes to market, we want to talk about product because none of this means anything without it. It is the constant innovation of product that will make all these routes to market a success. Product and what our customer wants from it is what we do and what we are really good at. So to tell you about the latest innovations we're launching, we have a petite range launching in September. We have our biggest ever occasion wear launch coming in autumn winter 23. We're now going to produce swim and beach all year round as it's been so successful. And our tailoring category that didn't exist a year ago is now one of our biggest categories. This innovation never stops and it is the understanding of our customer and what she wants to buy that fundamentally has made this business a success.

So we're now going to move on to look at development and expansion of our routes to market. First, looking at our own direct to consumer channel. So Sanda.com is the bedrock of our business. It's a multimillion pound turnover website that was built mobile first with 70% of our traffic on mobile. we have industry leading kpis such as very high conversion rate and very high email open rates with 50 of our revenue on sasanda.com being generated from email engagement with our customers is incredibly strong and this results in high customer retention on average a repeat customer buys from us four times a year We're now at the scale where we can increase this engagement even further by using artificial intelligence to enhance the customer experience. So up until now, human beings have been able to do the best job more cost effectively than software. But now we're at a scale where software combined with human beings can give an even better customer experience. So we're doing two things. We're personalising the website and our communications and we're launching the Susanda app. And these things together will make for a better customer experience and will also give us a much more sophisticated segmentation capability so we can target the customer more effectively. This will contribute to our growth in scale by increasing retention and will also optimize our acquisition by getting customers to shop more regularly. So first of all, to look at personalization, we're partnering with a company called Bloomreach, who are market leading data platform providers. So to explain, Bloomreach is software that collates millions of pieces of data about customers and visitors to the website, looking at their behavior and their shopping habits, and giving us the ability to achieve highly sophisticated segmentation, and then enable us to communicate on a more personal level with customers. So, for example, emails and push notifications can be personalized both for content, frequency and also time of day. And this can also be mirrored with on-site personalization. So the product a customer sees can also be personalized based on past behavior. Data has already been uploading onto the Bloomreach platform for quite some time. And we are virtually on the brink of launching and being able to begin activating the personalization. And this is going to happen later on in July.

And the second thing is we're going to expand our shopping channels with the launch of the Susanda app. It is already designed, looks fantastic and is in testing phase, ready to launch imminently. So again, we've partnered with the market leader, POC, and the reason we're doing an app, although our mobile site is already really good, is we know apps are proven to drive more frequent engagement and deeper browsing experience. Basically, as it sits there on your phone, people live off their phones. And also you can use push notifications to entice the customer to buy. We know our emails are already brilliant. We get a phenomenal 50% of our revenue from them. So with push notifications, this will give us a whole new way of communicating with customers with no ongoing cost. So we're expecting the app to drive increased retention rates. We already have a really loyal customer base. So we are envisaging that there'll be a lot of customers who'll want to shop this way. The real prize is the app and the personalization Julie has just been talking about coming together as we can maximize the benefit of the app with the personalization capacity that Bloomreach delivers.

So outside of our own website, a key focus is continuing to expand our routes to market. In under three years, we've already built a really successful third party business. And this has helped us to drive increased brand awareness, incremental revenue, and has helped us to catapult to profitability. So Sanda is already a top selling brand on the UK's largest women's wear retailers. We have already launched online with our new partner, Sainsbury's, which happened at the end of March this year. And we're launching a new wholesale arrangement with Freeman's in September. Just to explain a little bit about Freeman's, they're an online business similar to Veri. They partner with the Strictly Professional Dancers who front their TV ad campaigns, so are well aligned to Susanda. They're owned by the Otto Group, who are a large online player in Europe, so also a potential partner for us overseas. We also have other conversations ongoing and there may be other online partners to come in the UK.

So just to reiterate why we are expanding into bricks and mortar, there was always going to be a balance of where the customer wants to shop. Following Covid, women want to shop both in store and online. So currently 60% of fashion purchases are in store. So why did we decide to go with Sainsbury's? Well, they're a massive retailer. Sainsbury's currently stock their own brand two clothing with sales of 1 billion a year, making them already the fifth biggest clothing retailer in the UK with a 2% share of the UK's 56 billion clothing market. They have a demographic perfectly aligned to ours and there are 18 million Nectar cards in circulation in the UK. We bought into their concept of broadening their offer in store to include brands and the upmarket look and feel of their new fashion concept stores. They're going into department store territory and the senior team heading this up came from John Lewis. So with Sainsbury's, we're launching in September. So Sandra is an anchor brand and we have 150 styles going in over the autumn winter period. And they're taking a full mix of our product categories. The nine stores are going to be split across the country. And we have really high hopes that this will be very successful. But we also have other active conversations going on regarding other bricks and mortar opportunities. We're just in research mode at this point, but we will update you as and when we have more information.

We've always envisaged Susanda being a global business and we can see from the engagement we've had from potential partners internationally that there is a huge appetite for British brands and for Susanda in particular. We launched internationally with our own website this month as the global e-integration is now complete. This will enable us to sell directly from Sasanda.com across the globe. So currency and checkout is localized for over 200 countries and globally will partner with us to ship stock cost effectively worldwide. This will enable us to test the international market, trading using our existing database and giving us a low risk way of seeing where and in which countries we get traction. This is running alongside multiple conversations with potential international third party partners. Our plan is to launch online with at least one international partner this financial year. So just to round up what we've talked about today, it's been an amazing year and we've had a very strong start to the new financial year with growth in Q1 of 10% year on year against very strong comparators last year. We're confident in the outlook with the launch of the many new initiatives which will yield benefits in the balance of this financial year and beyond. We have a track record of successful execution and we have the team, systems and infrastructure in place to deliver our growth plans. The potential for Susanda across the globe is limitless. We've built all the solid foundations of a great British fashion brand and our constant innovation and agility means there are endless opportunities to grow the brand further. Just three years ago, we were a £9 million business sold only through our own website. And now we are a £42.5 million turnover profitable business sold through multiple channels and with many new initiatives about to happen, including launching both in store with Sainsbury's and launching internationally. And there's so much more to come. We fully intend to be one of the biggest fashion brands in the world. And on that note, we will hand over to you to ask us questions.

And the first question asks, how do you expect to meet full year expectations of about 30% growth year on year, having only achieved 10% growth in quarter one?

Okay, shall I start with the... answer to that question. So the many new initiatives that we have coming into play are all happening right now, including the launch with Sainsbury's, launching internationally, the app, the personalisation and an international online third party partner as well, which we anticipate launching this year. So with the multitude of new initiatives coming into play imminently, that's where we expect to see the results of those new initiatives combined with an already obviously growing business, which gives us the confidence that we will achieve the consensus numbers for the full year.

It's also worth noting that quarter one last year, times were different. It was pre the rise in inflation, pre-war. And when we map out the financial year of this year, that was reflected in our internal forecasting. So the delivery in quarter one is in line with our internal expectations. And the way that we built the budget was that Q1 would have a lower growth rate and that would rise particularly from H2 onward.

And the next question, it says, it's known that the fashion industry is a big user of water globally. And I wondered how you were developing and considering your ESG strategy.

Obviously, it's something that is very much at the top of our agenda, looking at how we develop this business in a more sustainable manner. And it is very much the top of the agenda for all fashion companies. In terms of what we're doing currently, we do adopt all the latest techniques in denim, for example, which has been historically one of the worst offenders for using water. So we use many of the modern techniques for using less water in our denim. We're constantly developing products using sustainable fabrics. So it really is very much an ongoing work in progress, I think, for the entire industry, not just for us. I don't know, Steve or Ali, if there's anything that you would add to that.

I think we broaden the question to the whole supply chain, for example. I think we've spoken before in these forums around a freight strategy. So we're more dominated than ever before by sea freight, which is less impactful than where the business was historically when we used to use air freight predominantly for the movement of our product. We have implemented consumer and all of our packaging now is recycled sources. So a lot of change is taking place within our business on an ongoing basis to further reduce the impact that we have on the environment in general terms.

I think we also work with suppliers now and ongoing who have the same thinking as us in terms of forward thinking of sustainability. So we make sure that our suppliers are aligned with us.

Will you need to raise additional funding to finance all these new initiatives? Steve, do you want to lead on that one?

Certainly not the intention. The headroom that we've got on the balance sheet post the raise that we did in February, we talked at that time predominantly around Sainsbury's, but we also talked around lots of other concurrent initiatives that we had in play. And today we're talking about some of those, not all of them, but some of them. So that was always in our roadmap to further enhance the way that we interact with our customers, both on our own site and through our third party partners. So, no, that's not the intention. We've got the right amount of stock coming towards us to deliver the plan. And we think that that that will stand us in really good stead in 25 and beyond.

And are you concerned about a potential recession in the UK?

I'll start with that, I think. I mean, I know we're not technically in recession, but I think anybody that's lived through recessions, it kind of feels a bit like a recession. It's felt like we've been in some sort of financial crisis for about a year, doesn't it? And obviously mortgage rates are the thing which at the moment are grabbing all the headlines. A year ago, it was much more about gas and electric prices. I think the external factors that we've navigated in this business, as I think I mentioned at the beginning, have been exponential from the minute. I mean, even before Susanda launched, we had the Brexit referendum. So there's never been... any kind of benign external circumstance in which this business has operated. We've always operated in extremely difficult circumstances, and now it happens to be economically difficult circumstances. So as ever, we continue to navigate, and I think we navigate well through those external factors. In terms of our own customers, have we seen an effect of economic challenges on our customers' behavior? I'd say there's no doubt about it that the market is difficult. It's not as easy as it would be if we weren't in difficult economic times. But in terms of how our customers are behaving, we've seen no specific effect on their behavior. Conversion rates have stayed high. AOVs stayed high. They continue to buy high-priced products. If anything, they're more interested in buying products exciting, smart, glamorous going out clothes and spending more money on an item probably than buying than buying casual wear. We've seen absolutely no difference at all in the way our customers behave in terms of spending using Klarna, for example. So Klarna, which is the way that you can spread out the payments to customers. when you buy things online. With younger fashion brands, for example, they see a really high prevalence of the usage of Klarna, whereas we see very, very low. It's less than 5% of people use Klarna, and we've seen absolutely no increase at all in that over the last year, which you would expect to see, really, if our customers were being squeezed a lot financially. We've also seen no particular change in... the way they spend in the month. So typically, again, with a younger brand, you would see more of an uptick at the end of the month when people are paid and they're feeling more flush. We see very consistent behavior across the month. So in general terms, no, it doesn't worry us any more than

the myriad of other things that have that have worried us and that we've had to navigate over the last six years and how is input cost inflation at the moment is it intensifying or easing or staying the same steve for you yeah it's multifaceted isn't it when when we talk about the the cost of our stocks so i think from where we stand we've also got the benefit of scale to a degree but also the importance on what on which our suppliers place on the relationship that they have with Susanda, which undoubtedly leads to better prices. So in terms of certainly freight has regulated and that's come down and also compared to where we were in the autumn when it felt at one point as though sterling was going to go to parity against dollar. It's clearly no longer there. And I think we hit a 15 month high today at 129. So there's a lot in the pot when we talk about the inbound cost of our stock. What we've seen is further improvements. If we look at everything together, we've seen further improvements. And that in part is what's helping us to drive gross margin improvement. So that objective that we have initially of getting to 60% like-for-like gross margin is being supported by improved inbound stock costings. And that will further continue. We're always active in terms of engagement with our existing suppliers and also new suppliers, not just from a costing point of view, but from a risk profile perspective as well, which we talk about a lot internally. to make sure that we're not wedded too much to one country, one supplier overly, because that's quite dangerous. So we spend a lot of time making sure that we put risk mitigation strategies in place, including with our whole supply chain.

If Sainsbury's bricks and mortar proved successful, would you consider a physical presence in other retailers like John Lewis or M&S?

Ali, do you want to take that? Yeah, I'll take that. We never say never to anything, first and foremost. So, yeah, we would consider that. Since the beginning of launching Susanda, there was retailers who wanted us to go in-store first. But at the time of that, it was just when COVID was starting, which wouldn't have been the right time to look at going in store. We would look in store both in the UK and internationally. So when we're looking internationally at the moment and we've got conversations going with partners across the globe, really, some of those partners want online presence only, some want both, some want in store. So with everything that we do, we look at each thing that's offered to us see if the commercial's right, see if the way that we'd work with them would showcase our brand right. And basically, if it's a partner that we can work and grow with. So we take each thing that comes across our path individually. But as I said earlier, 60% of fashion purchases are made in store. So it's definitely something that we would consider and look at.

And will your website become multi-language to fully exploit international opportunities?

What we're doing with Globally basically enables us to trade off the single website, sasanda.com, in a very cost-effective manner. So what it does is it localizes the checkout for each country, but it doesn't localize the entire website. So it's effectively like an overlay. It also localizes pricing. So if you're in America or you're in Germany or wherever you are, it will be localized to you and the checkout is localized. So working with Global E has enabled us to do that very rapidly across the globe at a very low cost and to enable us to do shipping in a cost-effective manner. What we then intend to see is where we get natural traction internationally. So we wouldn't rule out having a local language website in its entirety in certain countries across the globe. That's not something that we're about to do tomorrow, but it could certainly be on the roadmap in the future.

And so far, have you got any information on what types of markets for international are the best fit?

We have got multiple conversations going on in every continent. So whether it be Europe, North America, Australia, Middle East, Asia, we've got conversations going on right across the globe. Susanda could work in any of those places and we believe could be successful anywhere across the globe. The choice for us is really about deciding where the lowest hanging fruit is, I guess, where we think we're most likely to get instant traction in the most cost-effective manner and where the best partners are. So we are, but the conversations are going on everywhere.

Coming back to the UK, Sainsbury's is trading in line, but can you give any further colour on your interactions with them so far? Ali, do you want to start?

I suppose the colour is our relationship with Sainsbury's is really good. They're really great to work with. So everything's going smoothly since we launched. Everything's in line. They're really pleased with the performance. We've put more stock into them since we've launched. So we're beginning to see the sorts of things that sell for Sainsbury's that sell for us. They're very similar. And now we're really just looking for getting that really big amount of stock going in over the nine stores in September. And I think that's when we'll really see how their customer responds to the range. But so far, just going offline, it's going really well. And we're really pleased with it, as are they.

And across the broader picture, how important is social media to your marketing efforts?

I'll take that one. It's part of our marketing efforts, but it's certainly not the entirety of our marketing efforts. It's probably less important, I would say, to us than if we were a younger fast fashion brand because of the nature of our customers. So in terms of marketing expenditure, we spend the highest amounts of our expenditure goes on TV and brochures, which we have found with our customer demographic is a very cost effective way of acquiring good quality customers and also increasing retention. And social media really supports those two channels. as a um a constantly open shop window i guess so it um reminds customers constantly that sasandra is there we re-target customers by using social media when people have visited um the site but not shopped we're able to use it for retargeting um we we do also use um increasingly becoming quite effective for us is Google Shopping. As our range has got bigger, then Google Shopping is also becoming very effective. So that would be when somebody searches red leather dress, for example. So as our range has got bigger, that has become a more effective channel for us. So I would call it a support channel rather than critical, I would say, to what we do.

And are all garments still designed in-house? Ali, do you want to go?

Yes, all garments are designed in-house. We have a design team who basically design everything for Susanda. It's not a huge design team. I think there's probably about 10 of them. And they each design a different section, so be it leather or denim, etc. And we have a head of design who oversees all that. and each product is signed off by julie and i so yeah it's all original our prints are original as well and i think that's part of the reason we're so successful is that we just have a very differentiated product range that the customer can't get anywhere else and how do you split the roles and responsibilities between the two of you um i think um we get asked that quite a lot um

I think the way we see it is the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, if I could sum it up. I think having two of us means... many many things that are we just debate between the between the two of us um we're both involved in all critical things in the business and um and it becomes both of our brains i think together to fit to figure out how to move the the business forward so we do do a lot of things together as a team i would say and i think that makes us even better for it it makes it not one piece not it's never one person's vision um it's always the two of us and i think that has also made for a very um um The business generally is we very much take on board what everybody else thinks and their views. And so much of our business is collaborative. I guess we would call it a it's very much a democratic business. And I think that really does stem from having two CEOs at the top of the business. I mean, if you were to kind of highlight naturally where our natural abilities are, then Ali's would be her background's more creative and my background's more commercial. But we've always said that what's good about us is we're like a Venn diagram that crosses over in the middle. So although traditionally I'm commercial, I've got creative skills. And although traditionally Ali's creative, she's got very good commercial skills.

And you're only targeting 30% revenue increase for full year 24. What are your expectations for international sales contributions to revenue growth in full year 24? Steve, do you want to take that?

Yeah, we see the launch on both globally and more widely. The international strategy has been something that will yield some benefit in FY24. But more importantly, it's there to drive value into 25 and beyond. So some of the things that we're talking about here are not short, sharp benefits. They're things that are going to create long term value in the business by penetrating markets or approaches that will yield much more value with years to come. In terms of the specifics of the numbers, if you don't mind, I won't answer the question in a numeric form, but there will be some benefit. But more importantly, we're talking about things that will yield benefit for several years.

And can you break down your current manufacturing footprint geographically in terms of percentages?

We've got about 10 countries of supply when we look at the network of suppliers. The number of individual suppliers and importantly, the number of individual factories continues to grow. If we look at the big locations, though, I'm going to say a third, a third, a third. I'm going to use that for illustration. It's not quite because we've got more countries, but India, China and Turkey are the larger countries that we've got. And they're fairly equitable if you look at it over a 12 month period.

Are there any plans to add men's fashion wear at some point in the future?

I think we'd say never say never to anything. So when we started Susanda, and in fact the choice of the name Susanda, we made sure that we chose a name. that meant if we wanted to go across other categories, we were able to. So it's always been a potential that we could move into menswear, kidswear, homewares. So nothing is ever off the table, I'd say, for the future. But for now, we're focused on women's wear. And I think there's a very big price to be had in women's wear. So imminently and immediately, it's women's wear, but certainly not off the table.

And how do you control product quality? Ali, do you want to start on that?

Internally, we have a whole team who look at fit and quality. And from the beginning, we spent a hell of a lot of time on that because as we said, when we launched the business, our customer is looking for really high fashion, but really good quality and fit. So we knew when we launched the business. This had to be something we absolutely focused on. So we had a team right from the beginning who looked at that. We also work with suppliers who we monitor exactly how their garments come in and whether they come in in the way that they should come in. So we have a whole sort of system of if things don't come in how we want them to, then that supplier will move down the line and eventually won't be a supplier for us. But we also work with suppliers all the time, every day, making sure that they're adhering to the quality that we need to. And also for our garments, we're not paying, you know, we're a mid-price brand, so we're not getting our customer to pay £10 for a garment. So we're working with factories that are really good and use quality fabrics. So, yeah, it's very, very important to us and it's something that's monitored day in, day out.

Many thanks indeed. And that's the end of questions. Julie, do you have any closing remarks?

Just to say thank you all very much for attending today. Fantastic turnout. Thanks for great questions and we look forward to updating you again in due course.