Morning, everybody. Thanks for coming. Obviously, you've had more than enough pre-prepared words for me with the video, so we'll just go straight into questions if that's okay, Bethany.[Audio distortion]
Absolutely. Our first question today comes from Charlie Muir-Sands from Exane BNP Paribas. Charlie, please go ahead.
Good morning, Simon and Amanda. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Hi there. I just wanted to obviously, you've given a lot of detail with respect to your guidance and the range of possible outcomes. I think in the pre-recorded presentation, you said you started the year with a view that perhaps your budget was conservative, and now you think it's realistic. So is that a reason why you've not really seemingly tempered your expectations for the U.K. possibility in the year ahead?
No, sorry. We didn't think it was pessimistic. Well, actually, we said in a statement, apologies if we didn't, but we said that others thought it was pessimistic. We always thought it was realistic. I think when we initially just chose the statement in January, people thought that it was a little pessimistic, and now people are thinking it's much more realistic. But our view hasn't changed very much. We always anticipated the view would be difficult.
The fact that elements like inflation appear like they're going to be even tougher on the consumer versus a couple of months ago has not altered your view about how much demand they're going to have for Next products, though?
I mean, we didn't have a very fixed view about inflation. We were fairly certain that people's estimates at the time were wrong. Inflation was going to be worse than people anticipated. But what I wouldn't want you to think is that somehow we have this sort of supercomputer where we put input hundreds of variables, including our expectation of inflation, and somehow get an answer out at the end of it that will make sense. Our outlook for the year ahead is more than ever, I guess. Our guess at the moment hasn't really changed from our guess at the beginning of the year. And things are panning out, with the exception of events in Ukraine and Russia, things are panning out pretty much as we expected them to.
Yeah. And then my second question relates to freight. You've obviously flagged that you're all going to have to raise your prices for the autumn/winter even more than you anticipated at the start of January. What has changed? Had it not all been contracted by that point, or is there something else going on?
No, it's not about freight. It's really more about factory gate prices. I think this is influencing factory gate prices. Also, I think as we were contracting stock over the last sort of three, four months, there's been a noticeable squeeze on capacity on the supply side in country and the country in which we're buying, squeeze on capacity. As all retail has been sort of across the globe has been restocking, our lead time has gone further and further out. We're having to book stock further and further into the future as capacity gets booked up. And I think that's what's driven the sort of difference between the fixed-ish that we were looking at for autumn/winter and now the rates that we're looking at. I think it's more to do with that than it is to do with freight.
I think as we begin to see the effects of sort of the slowdown that we'd anticipated, not a number, that we begin to see that hitting the industry, and not just in the U.K., but across the world. I think we'll begin to see constraints on capacity easing as we sort of go through the year. So our sense is that we'll begin to see inflation and our cost prices beginning to ease towards the back end of this year, maybe next year. So that will filter into sort of maybe the middle to end of spring/summer next year that we'll begin to see an ease, but an easing of those pressure sources. We don't know that that's undoubtedly.
Great. And one where perhaps it's less about hedging and long-term, the near-term, you have the air freight, which has obviously gone up a lot and put some pressure on your international margins last year. Do you think any signs that that's either getting a bit cheaper again or at least moving a bit quicker again?
The surcharges are definitely lower than they were six months ago, but we still have, if we look at our surcharges today, our air freight surcharges today, they are higher than they were pre-COVID, and we expect that to stretch out the year. There's not any evidence that those are getting any worse, and our expectations are as domestic travel, if domestic travel and sort of business travel increases this year, then we'll see those air freight surcharges coming down. Because it's all about the more people who are traveling on flights, the more room there is for freight, and it was the reduction in people traveling that pushed up the air freight prices for passengers last year. Whether or not we see an uptick in international travel or not is something that we can't predict, but it is a double-edged sword, that.
Because as much as it makes export harder through air freight, obviously if people aren't travelling, that keeps more money in the domestic economy as well. So we'll see.
Yeah. Brilliant. Thank you very much.
Brilliant. Thanks, Joe. Who's next?
The next question comes from John Stevenson at Peel Hunt. John, your line is open.
Great. Thank you. Morning, both.
Morning.
Can you talk a little bit about the mix of formal and normal sort of seasonal product now versus pre-COVID and what that means for return levels? And then, second question, I know to what extent the business needs to embrace dropship more to fulfill sales as you go into the future? I mean, you're clearly keen to own the customer journey. Is that viable over the long term? Do you need to do a little bit more sort of dropship going forward?
So I'll answer this with a second. I'll answer the second question, John. In terms of dropship, no, quite the reverse. Where we have got dropship, as I hope, which we're trying to say in the presentation, actually, where we have got dropship on large furniture items, we're still shipping directly from the client's warehouse to our consumer, but we're doing it through our own network, so we're gaining control of the service. Our ambition is to increase our control over the service rather than reduce it. So we're certainly not looking at any increase in the amount of stock that goes to our customers outside our own distribution network. We are looking at ways in which we can push the idea of taking stock directly from our clients' warehouses directly to consumers, for example, on very high-ticket type items where the value consolidation is small.
We haven't developed those systems yet, but we are developing them with one particular brand where we're looking at taking stock directly from their warehouse to consumers through our own network. But I'm certainly not looking at any increase in dropship in the year ahead outside of our control in the U.K. and Europe. Sorry, I forgot the first part of your question. I should have written it down.
I can't always remember.
Formal and yes, Amanda, just a moment. Sorry. Formal and characteristic. We are seeing a very strong return to formal wear, which actually is slightly higher, if anything, swinging into formal wear. It puts it slightly higher for higher participation than it was, particularly companies like women's tailoring, than it was going into the pre-pandemic. So if you compare it, say, for example, the potential for women's tailoring, what we think the potential is at the moment, it's greater than it was in, say, 2019, but still significantly down on where it was 2015. Because from sort of 2015 to 2019, we saw a significant reduction, particularly in women's formal sales. So I wouldn't want you to think, "Oh, what we're seeing at the moment is a return to the best days of tailoring." But it certainly looks like it's slightly better than it was going into the pre-pandemic.
Does that answer the question?
It does, indeed. And does that mean returns levels are also sort of back now at sort of normal pre-pandemic levels?
Yes, and they have been for some time, actually.
Yeah. Perfect. Okay. Fantastic. I don't know if I can squeeze one at the end, but just in terms of capacity and sales proposition for peak this year, is that looking obviously better than it was last year?
Yes, it is because of price inflation. So if you're looking at the total 1% growth you're forecasting and combine that with 8% increase in sales, actually, it's the better sort of the capacity model, which we're under the most capacity constraint of 6.5%. Actually, we're anticipating shipping less units in the back end of the year ahead than we were last year. So that does take the pressure off some of the capacity constraints we have. The addition of new client-appropriate platform type arrangements and the increase in options still means we've got to work very hard to keep our forward locator, to have the forward location capacity that we need. But as it stands today, we're not overly concerned about capacity constraints if the budget comes through as expected.
Okay. Brilliant. Great. Thank you very much, Stephen.
Okay. Thank you. Next question, please.
The next question comes from Simon Irwin at Credit Suisse. Simon, please go ahead.
Good morning. First question just on China. How much are you sourcing out of China, and how much risk do you see to supply chains coming out of China at the moment from COVID, recent shutdowns in Guangdong Province?
Yeah. So at the moment, the total amount of stock we're getting out of China is around 25%. So a dramatic reduction on where it was five, 10 years ago, where it was nearer 50%. In terms of the disruption we're seeing in China, there is some disruption. In general, we've built those into our lead times because we have put a lot of contingency into our lead times. But there will be some products and some fabrics that are maybe two-to-four weeks later than we'd hope there'd be. In sort of standing back from that question, asking about our general stock levels, at the moment, we're very comfortable with the stock levels that we've got in the business at this point in time. We're still fine. We've caught up with where we want to be in terms of stock levels within the business.
Stock levels aren't one of the concerns that are most sort of bothering us at this point in time.
Great. And can I just kind of follow up on your price increases and what that means for margins and stuff? I mean, is it reasonable to assume that what you're pushing through in terms of price increases would result in a flat gross margin? But does that mean that there's a kind of normalization of markdown kind of built into those assumptions as well?
Yeah. So in terms of bought- in gross margin, we're ending up pretty much the same as last year. There are some areas where we've taken the view on home where we actually have taken a hit to gross margin or to some freight. That being the numbers that you're looking at. So there's some erosion of bought- in gross margin on home. But on fashion, we're basically ending up with flat bought- in gross margins. In terms of markdown, we always budget for markdown separately from our target bought- in gross margin. So we make our margin at full price, and then what we're left over with, we clear as best we can. But we don't try and account for that in the price that we charge the consumer.
Broadly, if you take the retail value, take an item of £50 that goes into the end-of-season sale, the cost to clear it will be around 5%, 2.5%. Within the budget that you're looking at, we have assumed a much higher level of markdown than we had in the previous year. And that's because last year was exceptionally low. So what we've assumed is a return to more normal levels of surplus stock and more normal levels of clearance. And that's again, last year's improved clearance rate and much lower markdown potential there. So it's just a return to sort of normal levels of markdown.
Great. And just finally, quickly on tax. Obviously, you've guided us to a surprisingly low number for this year, but how are you thinking about tax over the kind of following two or three years?
I won't tell you how we're thinking about it because it's probably not publishable, but let me ask Amanda to look up the numbers.
I think for this year, we'll be at a similar level, around about 18%. And then next year, tax rate goes up to 25% from April. So I guess we would be somewhere at maybe 22%, 23%, something like that from April 2023.
Yeah, and obviously, with one hand, what's being taken away, we may get some of that given back in the form of super- deductions and capital allowances, but we'll see how that all comes out. Okay. Great. Thank you, Simon.
Thank you.
Next question. Thank you. Next question, please.[Cross Talk] [Audio distortion]
This question comes from Tony Shiret at Panmure Gordon. Tony, please go ahead.
Thanks very much. First of all, thanks, Amanda, for doing the 15-year stress test as requested. A lot of work in there.
No problem, Tony. Any.
No. Secondly, the questions are basically about the systems work that's going on behind the platform, online platform. You say you're updating various aspects of the systems. So a couple of things. I just wondered what the overall framework, the ERP system is, is that being updated at the same time, or are you still working within a system that has been around for a while? And the second question is really about how you benchmark the quality of what you do against more established platforms because you use them. And what are the areas that you feel that you're sort of significantly behind on, and what sort of developments do you think you need to do? That's it.
Yeah. It's a huge question. So apologies if I don't answer it in full. So just sort of starting with where you started with the ERP, we don't have one enterprise system for Next. We have lots of different systems, most of which have been developed internally and some of which have been bought in externally, which we knit together to create our enterprise system. There is not one supplier of an enterprise system that we can find that would satisfy all of our needs. And so much of what we want to do within the business requires bespoke software. But actually trying to buy in external software to do the job just isn't possible. And that kind of answers the benchmarking question as well.
Because how another ERP system would handle the accounting of returns of orders that have been made from home and delivered from stores, there just isn't one that does that efficiently. So it's very difficult to benchmark the system we've got because the functionality we require just isn't out there as a standard package. There are some packages that are out there where we have been able to contract out new external software. So for example, we've just implemented a new payroll system that's provided by Oracle to provide the payroll engine, but that's required a huge amount of bespoke work around it to get it right, for example, for our Shift Marketplace in stores. In terms of how the modernization program is going, the place where we've really started is in our website.
There we've done a header, the footer, the product listing pages about to be launched. In general, the modernization program is going according to plan, although inevitably slightly more expensive than the prices that we originally quoted, but not less expensive than the prices that we budgeted because the finance team and systems team need to stay to a slightly different view of how much the whole thing will actually cost. We're broadly in line with where we want to be in terms of time scale and finances on the modernization program. I think that the important thing to stress is that this is not a big bang rewrite of any one of our big systems. It is a module-by-module rewrite of individual parts of individual systems. We've just rewritten the payroll part of our ERP that's just incorporating Oracle.
We've just rewritten the header, the footer, and the product listing page on our website. The other bits of modernization will follow those. So I can't sort of give you a, "This is the new system, and this is when it's going to be introduced," because it is an ongoing rolling program of modernizing and containerizing all the software within the business to make it more developable than it is at the moment. The areas I think that we would like to be easier to develop and more robust are our finance systems. We've got a lot of work to do. All the numbers that you see here are the systems that produce them. Give us the numbers, and we're very confident that the numbers are right, but they are clunky and difficult to use. So we'll be modernizing those.
The website is the other big area of modernization that we're focusing on, website and account management.
Thanks.
Thank you. Okay. Next question, please.
The next question comes from Richard Chamberlain from RBC Capital Markets. Richard, please go ahead.
Thank you. Morning, Simon. Morning, Amanda. Yeah. A couple from me, please. First one's on the store estate. Simon, maybe you could just touch on why you're planning to close 15 or so stores in the year ahead? Are these sort of generally smaller-than-average stores that are not economically viable? I guess there's probably a bigger and better store nearby, often. And the second one is just on Reiss. I see you've lifted your stake to 51%, and I think it's going to contribute a little bit of profit this year. Where is Reiss now as sort of EBITDA versus pre-pandemic? In my sense, it's probably got some way to go. It's more geared to the sort of smarter, tailored trends. So there's probably quite a bit of upside there, particularly now you've got it on the full Total Platform offer. Yeah.
Those are my two questions. Thanks.
Great. Okay. Well, we've tried hard enough to predict our own numbers, so I'm certainly not going to get into the business of trying to cost Reiss at an EBITDA level. We only care about profit, by the way. I know that it's a lovely bit everyone loves EBITDA, but we think depreciation or capital is a real cost. So we look at PBT, but I'm not going to get into the business of trying to forecast their growth. It's certainly within our numbers, and it's too small a part of our total for us to really spend a lot of time worrying about getting that exactly right. Although what I can say is that it is doing significantly better than we thought it would do when we bought it. And that's the one thing I would say about it.
And largely as a result, increasingly that return to the tailoring trend. In terms of the stores, there is only one reason why we ever shut a shop, and that is because it doesn't make money. So it really is very simple. The stores that we're shutting are ones that don't make money. And in terms of that will sometimes be because the store is one that we would like to keep, where the turnover won't go to a neighboring store, but the rent's too high. And it'll sometimes be more often it will be where if we shut the shop, the profit that we'll lose in the shop will be more than made up for the business we anticipate getting from surrounding shops. And that's when you get stores where they're making 2 or 3% net margin after accounting for the distribution costs.
Those shops often you'll find you don't need very much transfer of trade to actually make a net profit from shutting them. So it's a relatively simple calculation, and it's different for every shop, but there's only one reason why we shut the shop, and that is because closing it will make us more money than keeping it open.
Okay. That's clear and just to be clear, these are generally sort of smaller-than-average sort of legacy-type stores that you're closing, are they?
Yeah. Generally.
Okay. Okay. Thanks very much.
Thank you. Thank you. Next question, please.
The next question comes from Geoff Lowery at Redburn. Geoff, please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Team. Just one question, really. In terms of your buying and your sourcing function, should we think about the wider opportunity here in terms of the license business and franchise business, or could you open your supply chain up and incorporate it within the Total Platform offer? I'm thinking in particular about sort of rising costs of supply chain compliance and what your scale and expertise could bring to partners in that platform space as well. Thank you.
Yeah. To give a thankful welcome back to the other side of the divide. The answer's not always clear in our objectives, but I think we've been through some difficult. But I think in terms of sourcing and how much we open that up to clients, I think there are two separate issues. I think we wouldn't necessarily open it up as a matter of course to Total Platform clients because we do see it as a significant source of competitive advantage to our sourcing company. That said, when we've got non-competing brands or brands that are largely people like Victoria's Secret, we are definitely in discussions with them, and I think actually we've done some work on sourcing for them. So we'll continue to look at sourcing as an opportunity where we have relationships with clients.
I think where we've invested in a business, as we have done with Reiss, then we were much more enthusiastic to open up our sourcing to them because obviously we not only would the sourcing business make a profit in its own right as it does, but also we would be helping in assisting a business in which we had a stake. So there's not sort of one rule that we've got about whether or not we open up our sourcing to partners, but it is something that we're actively looking at, and we think it is potentially something that makes Total Platform more attractive in terms of and also for franchise partners as well. We think it makes us as a franchise partner more attractive if we can source the product for the U.K. and Europe more efficiently than they can source it through their own networks.
So it is definitely a piece of the jigsaw. I wouldn't want to put a number on here as to how big that opportunity is, but it's one that we're actively pushing.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Jeff. I think the next question's from Anne Critchlow.
Yeah. From Société Générale. Please go ahead.
Thank you. My question is about Next Unlimited, the subscription delivery. I'm just wondering what percentage of customers and also percentage of sales it now covers. And does it mean the pressure on margin over time as it gets taken up by customers? So there's use of it to get offset basically. And does it perhaps keep customers out of stores as it gets taken up over time because they wouldn't go into a store to pick up for free? I just wonder what your thoughts are there.
Yeah. Okay, so I mean, first of all, in terms of the analysis that we're doing, we are very rigorous about this in terms of making sure that Next Unlimited is profitable. And what we find with Next Unlimited customers is that they spend more than the control groups, so we've gone back and looked at all of the cohorts that we saw just right back at the beginning. All of the cohorts versus the control groups that were not offered Next Unlimited. In all cases, their sales and profit of the unlimited customers is higher than the sales and profit of the control groups that weren't offered Next Unlimited, so we still think it's a positive thing. However, the sales increase on those customers is not as great as the profit increase.
So the margin that we make on those customers is lower than it would be on normal customers. We're not driven by margins as potentially we're driven by margin in pounds. So we still think it's the right thing to do in terms of pounds. We haven't issued the number of potential sales that we do on unlimited. And that is actually at the moment we're keeping back, which is code for I don't have that number immediately at my fingertips. If Amanda does, then we could make it not commercially sensitive.
I know we have 13% of our U.K. customers have an unlimited arrangement with us.
Yeah, so 13% of our customers have unlimited.
But yeah.
The amount of business they do with us is still commercially sensitive. So we're really at this point in time.
Okay. Thank you. And could I just ask a follow-up on that? Because Next is still making much higher margins and returns than the disruptive players that are offering free delivery and returns. So do you ever think about getting more disruptive and trying to take a bigger place in the U.K. apparel marketplace arena for the future?
Yeah. I mean, I think so first of all, I think when you look at pure players, particularly if they're selling other people's brands, you need to compare their margins not so much to our overall online margin, but to the margin of Label because they're much more equivalent businesses. And hopefully, the sort of margin effect we've given you into the aggregation profit, infrastructure profit, and product profit is just an end product. I think that's the first thing. Secondly, we spend a lot of time thinking about this. And for us, it's not about disruption or gaining market share. It's all about ultimately what delivers more value.
We did a three-year trial in Northern Ireland where we offered free delivery on all goods in Northern Ireland and compared that to what happened to sales in Northern Ireland versus the rest of the economy over the rest of the country over a three-year period. What we found is that there was a very small increase in total sales for those consumers, but it was less than 3% and not nearly enough to pay for the margin erosion through the free delivery. I think the thing for us was it wasn't just that margins got eroded through the free delivery, but also consumer behavior changed. They ended up ordering more times. The cost of the free delivery was greater than just the loss of the revenue. It also encouraged consumers to make more frequent, smaller purchases.
But when you looked at the value of those more frequent, smaller purchases, they weren't nearly enough to pay for the free delivery. And we think the reason for that was because we have got the stores. So the customers who really want free delivery can always get free delivery through those stores. And most people, the vast majority of our customers live within a 15-minute drive of our shops.
Great. Interesting. Thank you.
It's a pleasure. Next question, please.
Comes from Caroline Gulliver at Stifel, Caroline, please go ahead.
Good morning. It was interesting. Most of my questions have been answered, but two left. Just could you give us an update on your marketing budget? Apologies if it's in the presentation. I think last time you said it was sort of GBP 100 million and growing, and you were having some success with sharing those costs with third parties. So I just wanted an update on that, please.
My second question is just on sustainability. I noted your comments in the report about not having a muted level of interest in one of your small childrenswear range. But just wondered if you were seeing any signs of customers increasingly opting into your next-generation Label product.
Yeah. I mean, our next question is that in terms of sustainable product, we haven't seen a big swing into any of those products. So I mean, we'll continue to fulfill all of the promises we made on sustainability, and we will be pushing ahead with. But we're not seeing any significant push from consumers. It's much more about push from investors and actually colleagues. But we're not seeing any necessarily uptick in consumer demand for that type of product. In terms of the marketing budget, last year there was an adverse movement of about 0.2% margin online for marketing to work. What that says is that we actually increased our marketing expenditure by more than we increased sales. So by more than the 47% that sales went up by.
We anticipate that that figure will increase again in the year ahead, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of sales.
Thank you.
Okay. Next question, please.
Comes from Adam Cochrane at Deutsche Bank. Adam, please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. A couple of questions on stock levels if I can. Apologies if this is in your press release, but I haven't read all through it yet. In terms of the stock risk on third-party product within Label, can you just remind us of how much of the Label product you take on the stock risk for? And really, the question is related to if there are changes in market demand, particularly as we look into the second half of the year, and where this risk lies, I suppose, is the first question.
Yeah. Okay. Good question. So in terms of fashion products, the vast majority of the stock we sell from third-party brands is on commission. However, pretty much all of the big sports brands operate on wholesale. So that stock is taken at our risk. But it tends to mark down. It tends to be slightly more stable, and the markdown is less. So we're not overly concerned about stock risk on third-party brands at the moment. I think we have given in the document.
Can we break it out?
It's just a different level.
It's about just looking what on page 37 of the release, out of the GBP 777 million, GBP 500 million of that is on commission. So what's 64% is on commission.
That's great, and the second one.
And the second one.
Sorry.
Yeah. Go ahead.
The second one I was thinking about is you're talking about having to book your stock earlier because of supply chain issues. Obviously, over the last few years pre-COVID, there was a tendency for you and others to try and order your stock nearer and nearer to the point of sale. Do you view this trend we're seeing at the moment as a short-term blip because of external conditions, and the longer-term trend will revert itself as the world normalizes, or is there a structural change?
No. I think it's short-term, and it's all to do with trade. It's nothing to do with actually the speed of design to manufacture or the speed of manufacturing itself. It's all about the fact that we've had factories that have had difficulties making production because of COVID disruption in the factories, and much more importantly, we've had ships that have just failed past support that we're expecting them to stock out with our stock, so we've had to build in a lot of extra time for transporting the stock, and that's all of the lead time. I wouldn't say all of the lead time. The vast majority of the lead time increase is about increased freight times, both from further afield and from nearer as well. Freight times from everywhere have gone up.
But obviously, it's a much bigger increase in terms of days when it's coming from far east. But I anticipate that that will reverse out. And if it isn't a structural change, it is just a feature of the disruption that the supply chain has been under and continues to be under in terms of freight and disruption to factory production.
So do you see that as a real risk that retailers and aggregators are all sort of bulking up their inventory levels into the second half of this year at the same time as potentially you have this consumer squeeze on living standards? Could you see a situation of maybe over-inventory as we look into the second half of this year? Not maybe Next specifically, but more broadly.
Yeah. It's definitely a very good observation. I think that so one thing to make very clear is that we're not ordering more stock. We're ordering stock earlier. So what you shouldn't have seen is that everyone's bulking up, I think, is the way to use. We're not actually ordering more stock. We are ordering earlier. That does mean we've got less flexibility. So I think if we and others have got our budgets wrong, then it will be harder to get out of stock commitments that we've already made. We'll have less flexibility in our stock commitments. So I mean, to that extent, I think if you see a very sharp consumer downturn, our ability, and I suspect the ability in general of the wider industry to respond to that downturn, will be that there'll be some momentum in the stock, which will be harder to get out of.
Great. Thank you.
Next question.
The next question comes from Andrew Hollingworth at Holland Advisors. Andrew, please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Just a couple of questions on the sort of longer-term development of Total Platform and Label. On Total Platform, you've obviously talked about us telling us not to get too excited in the short term, but that you're excited about it in the long term, which is great. So just in the statement, you've obviously laid out that now there's sort of three you've sort of iterated it into three potential offerings. First question would be, is there any different sort of margin implications from those offerings? Follow-on to that would just be in terms of looking at Total Platform, there's been a sort of we're going to deliver for the customers we've got today before we start signing up, you know, tomorrow. But six months, a year on, we're getting closer to warehouse capacity opening.
Where are we in the sort of development of the offering versus getting out there and selling the offering, if you like? It'd be really interesting for you to talk about that. And then I have got a question on Label, which I can come back to.
Okay, so very simply, first of all, I hope we haven't given the impression of giving it our certain eye and given the impression of being flattered by everything or anything. I mean, you'd be very worried if you've got any excitement happening, but apologies for that. I think we think it's very interesting in terms of platform development and might be a big business, but we're not at this point going to get into any sort of tentative sort of brand projections for it. We are still in the development stage of it, but we're not rushing out and marketing it to as many people as we possibly can because within the foreseeable future, towards the end of 2023, we haven't got a lot of capacity to take on new clients.
So I'm not expecting any excitement in the numbers in the sort of medium term. In terms of pre-offers, the margins are the same. And the reason for that is because the value we're providing the client with in each case is the same. In terms of the value, we're providing the infrastructure, warehousing, distribution, improved services, flexible costs. We're providing all that value, but none of them are giving the consumer access to the customer base that Label's. So the net margins we make ought to be similar across all of them. I think what is the case is that the Total Platform Lite and the Total Platform Super Lite are much easier and quicker to implement.
So in terms of the speed of growth of the business, if more customers or our customers opt for those Lite or Super Lite versions, then it's likely we'll grow the business much faster, but not necessarily that the margins for us will be better. Obviously, the Super Lite and Lite versions of Total Platform are cheaper for the client. So they would make higher margins on those options, but we wouldn't. Does that answer all your questions?
Yeah. No. I think that's fair enough. So ultimately, in terms of I suppose what I'm getting at is you've talked about it once, and now you've iterated it in terms of different offerings. Internally, do you now feel that you've sort of really sort of honed it into what you want it to be? And then there will be a point at which you start rolling it out more aggressively, as and when you've got the capacity to do so. Is that fair?
Yeah. I think it is absolutely fair. I mean, at the end of the day, how fast you roll it out isn't entirely within our control. It's not like a set of stores where you can decide whether you can buy a shop from another and say, "Hey, we've got to get the client." So there's always that barrier to growth. But we won't aggressively market it until we're sure that both we have the warehouse space and capacity to operate efficiently for clients and that our software is quick and we can implement the software fast enough. And I think one of the things we're working on, as well as building warehouse space, is making our software, which started off very much bespoke for each client, making that software far more configurable for new clients. So I wouldn't anticipate any bottom line.
I wouldn't expect us to be aggressively marketing Total Platform in this year. We'll probably start at the beginning of next year, if we're happy with where we've got to, for implementation towards the back end of 2023 and into 2024.
Okay. That's really clear. The one quick question I had on Label was just it's obviously interesting to see what you've been doing on the commission rates in Label. And you could just remind me. I think you've brought it down 3%, but I can't remember from what to what. And maybe you could just talk about was that done because of competitive offerings? Was it done because you were just sort of playing with elasticity? And I think in the statement, you've also talked about, obviously, there's a different level of margin between wholesale and commission. Could you give us a feel for that difference as well?
Yeah. I mean, wholesale is much more profitable, but we hate the stock risk, so it's higher margin, higher risk, but on commission, the reason we brought the commission down is because we were making more money, and we were making more efficiency, and we wanted to pass those on to our clients, and so it wasn't that we were fine-tuning the sort of sales to profit of the business. We decided what our target margin needs to be to have a business that will make a very good return or a healthy return on the capital and time invested in it, and the rest, we will give back to our clients as and when we achieve greater efficiencies.
And so those reductions in commission rates were all about maintaining our competitive business and the attractiveness of the Label platform to clients rather than any sort of tactical attempt to increase the sales margin equation in any one particular year. Our ambition is to be our client's brand's most profitable third-party route to market. That is our ambition. It remains our ambition. Anything we can do to maintain that or to improve our chances of succeeding in that ambition, we will continue to do. So if we are able to get further economies of scale or efficiencies within Label, we will pass those on to clients as and when we see fit.
Wonderful. And just remind me, what did 3% as from what to what over those three years?
40%-37%. That's on fashion. We do have other rates of commission for different products. For example, home products are on different commissions depending on returns rates at the same price. That's fair. Our core fashion commission, which is paid for all of our fashion clients, is 37%.
Wonderful. Thank you, sir.
Thank you very much. Okay. Next question, please.
I'd just like to remind people to press star one if you would like to ask a question. But the next question comes from James Grzinic from Jefferies. James, please go ahead.
Thank you. Yes. Good morning, Simon and Amanda. Two quick ones. The first one, I know it's early days, but can you perhaps share what's happened to the conversion rates at Reiss since we launched? That'd be interesting. And second one, Simon, it just sounds as if you have, besides the obvious ones, people using offline more than online, going more high street versus sequentially routed to retail locations. It doesn't sound as if you've detected or more formal way of catching up on that. You haven't detected in recent weeks a change in behavior beyond that. Just want to confirm that that is the case. There's been no change on how people shop through the price point or across categories.
Across categories, we are seeing a change that we said was a very significant swing back into sort of non-lockdown trends and away from the areas that did best during lockdown. So we're definitely still within that year-on-year movement in customer preference, still very marked. But we see that as being basically a return to normal. So I think what we can say is that whereas I think there was some sort of a past lockdown had permanently changed people's buying habits, our sense is that they probably haven't as of now today. In terms of conversion rate, it literally has been like a couple of weeks. So it's way too early to say. What we can say is that and also, they're up against a period of time where their shops were shut last year. So the numbers probably look better than they are anyway.
But what I can say is that they are beating the targets that they set themselves in terms of sales. And that's as much as I can really say at this point in time.
Okay. Mr. Simon, just to follow up, I guess my first question is really around price points. Whether you're seeing any trending down, whether personal spend versus home-related spend is changing from your perspective? More around those lines?
No. What we're seeing is a continuation of the trend that we identified last autumn/winter, where actually, if you look at the balance of the consumer preferences, they are actually moving up the price architecture rather than down. So what we're seeing is that the increase in the achieved selling price of what people are actually buying is greater than the increase in the like-for-like increase in selling prices. So if our increase in like-for-like garments, like-for-like products is 3.5% at the moment, the increase we're seeing in the average selling price of the product that people are actually buying is greater than that. Now, that's partly because people are switching back into formal wear and casual, and on the whole, formal wear has become more expensive than casual items.
But our sense is that there is or I think there is a good chance that consumers are actually switching from buying lots of cheap items to fewer, more expensive items. That appears to us to be what's going on, but it's very early days, and I wouldn't want to draw too many sweeping conclusions from that.
Great. Thank you very much.
Okay. Thanks. Next question.
Comes from Simon Bowler at Numis. Simon, please go ahead.
Good morning. I want to touch on kind of two areas, if possible. I'll kind of frame them in the context of your 15 years down, but they're not specific questions with regards to that. The first one is getting some helpful color about that Northern Ireland trial, and it kind of came across the importance of the stores, the kind of the free delivery, which I guess supports kind of demand proposition and also customer behaviour. And if you're planning to kind of go through closing stores over that 15-year period, then if you thought, "Where are you at in terms of things like alternative routes to customer pickup, drop-off, or whatever implications that might have on the economics of the business and its proposition?" I guess.
The second one was then on the overseas part of the business, which again compounds into a very large part of what you do. Can you just confirm to what extent is that solely your own brand versus some sort of aggregated proposition, and then maybe also just remind us where you are from a kind of global warehousing perspective and how you think that may need to develop as that business continues to scale.
Yeah. Okay. Good question. So in terms of the value to the business in terms of pickups, in terms of the 15-year stress test, we've been quite specific. I think we added in 195 stores that on the underlying economics of those stores we would have shut, but we will keep in the 15-year stress test. We have forced them to keep open at a loss in order to provide service to the online business. In the scheme of things, the cost of that per annum is around the cost of keeping those extra stores open, we estimate. I think who knows per annum, it is around GBP 35 million to keep those sort of loss-making stores open, around GBP 35 million.
That's the percentage of the projected online sales, the less than 0.5% that we projected as a retail cost, if you like, for the benefit of the online business. We think at 330 shops, that would give us very significant coverage in terms of pickup shops, and it would cover the vast majority of that.
90%.
90% of the pickups that we do at the moment are in those 330 shops as it stands today. Now, I think the reality is we would move, if those shops really were less unprofitable, we would keep some form of presence, but in much smaller dedicated parcel-type shops, still make branding, still for our own use, but we would have more sort of first and foremost parcel shops and then maybe some retail rather than the other way around we're doing at the moment. We haven't modeled that. At the moment, there are very few parts of the country where we can really justify having a parcel shop of our own brand because we've got shop service in those areas. We have done a couple of trials, one of which is in Dumfries.
Dunfree.
Free. I didn't use the Dumfries, but it's actually Dumfries, where we have got a parcel shop, and we're sort of still monitoring the effect of that because that's the only part of the country where we've really got a sort of 30-40-minute drive time to the nearest alternative pickup point, so we will be experimenting over the next five years with cheaper alternatives to serve our online business, but as yet, we can't draw any conclusions from those that we have.
Okay. Great. And then on the overseas part of the business, sorry?
Overseas part of the business, in terms of mix, the vast majority of stuff we sell overseas is our own brand. There are some territories where we're gaining traction on other brands, but I wouldn't want to say what those brands are or which country it was. In terms of overseas operations, the vast majority of our business is still serving from the U.K.. We have three sort of distribution centres which are over water. First one is in Northern Ireland, second is in Germany, and the third one was in Russia or is in Russia, but isn't in Denmark or Ireland.
In terms of the area of growth, the biggest area of growth in terms of overseas distribution will be our German hub, and we're in active negotiations to either expand or relocate that hub in order to increase both its capacity for the German domestic market, but also we're looking at servicing more other European countries from that German hub as time moves on.
Okay. Great. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Okay. And I think we've run out of questions, which I hope is a good thing. But unless there are any more questions, we will draw to a close. Thank you very much for your time today. If you have any further questions, Amanda will be around on her phone for the rest of the day waiting for you. Thank you very much.