Asda to double down on George brand as it seeks to overtake Primark in UK clothing market

Asda may be struggling on some fronts but the supermarket giant is clearly succeeding as far as its George clothing and homewares brand is concerned and this is what it plans to use to win major market share in the UK.

Chairman Allan Leighton is driving plans to kickstart a turnaround at the privately owned business and one of these is transforming up to 100 stores to make the offer more prominent.

The Telegraph reported that Asda aims to overtake Primark in UK clothing retail. There are several rankings of the biggest UK clothing retailers, but by volume, George MD Liz Evans told the newspaper that Primark is number one, followed by Next, with Asda third. She also said the company is already number one by volume in kids’ clothing.

The company has issued a number of results reports and updates pointing to the strength of George — which had been Britain’s very first supermarket full fashion brand — and it has continued to shine, even in the face of declining supermarket sales for the business.

That fact really underlines the appeal of George given that grocery sales were always seen as the key reason for shoppers to visit supermarkets with fashion being a nice add-on. It’s clear with George that some people are visiting Asda with fashion as their primary motivation.

Asda’s aim of overtaking Primark comes as the latter saw its first post-pandemic sales fall in 2024 and warned of “continued consumer caution in the UK”.

And Evans told the Telegraph that since Leighton’s recent return to Asda as executive chairman there was a renewed sense of “clarity, belief and teamwork”.

Evans told the newspaper “we’re getting back to understanding our customers. We started with Asda price and then we had a relentless focus on fixing availability. We have made staggering progress, but there is still a lot to do.

“We’ve invested back into hours and the stores, and you can feel it. Allan has referenced the turnaround as Everest, and he’s right. We’re at the start of the recovery.”

George sales were up 3.5% in the first three months of the year and the company recently opened its first standalone George store in Leeds.

The report of its plan for the brand comes just a few days after the company filed its 2024 accounts that showed it losing almost £600 million despite its sales rising. Its pre-tax loss during the year was £599 million, down sharply from a pre-tax profit of just over £180 million in 2023. That said, “non-underlying” costs hit the business hard and without them it would have achieved a pre-tax profit of more than £115 million. And its operating profit before non-underlying items grew from £637 million to £671 million “driven by an improvement in trading margins, [and] disciplined cost management through the delivery of operational efficiencies”.

As mentioned, revenue rose during the year, climbing from £25.6 billion to £26.8 billion. But with its petrol stations excluded, its sales actually fell to £21.7 billion from £21.9 billion.