Times still tough for Quiz, Christmas offered no relief

Quiz Clothing issued a bleak half-year report just over a month ago and it issued another trading update on Tuesday with more bad news.

The company said that December trading was “consistent with the trends experienced in previous months” and sales in the period fell 11%, or £1.1 million, year on year to £8.7 million.

That’s despite Quiz specialising in the party-focused clothing that we would have expected to do well in the Christmas party season.

It said the reduction “reflects the negative impact of inflationary pressures on consumer demand, which resulted in declines in traffic both in-store and online offsetting consistent year on year trends in key metrics, such as conversion rates and average transaction values”.

At least the gross margin performance was “consistent year on year” and the board “remains confident in achieving current market expectations for the full year”.

It added that it had total liquidity headroom of £5.4 million as of this week and that the previously announced review of the strategic options available to it continues to progress. It intends to report the findings from this review by the end of March.