High street retailer of fashion footwear and accessories, Dune, has announced the launch of a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) proposal.
The Company has been affected by the impact of lockdown measures on customer footfall across its sites, which has hit footwear retailers particularly hard.
With the likelihood of future trading continuing to be adversely affected by ongoing restrictions, Dune is undertaking a financial and operational restructuring programme which is supported by its existing financial stakeholders with amended banking facilities, conditional on the approval of a CVA.
If approved, the CVA will see no immediate closures across the store estate but will see a number of sites move to a turnover-based rent.
Daniel Rubin, founder and CEO of The Dune Group, said: “Before COVID-19 hit, the business was trading robustly, but the resulting lockdowns have had, and continue to have, a severe financial impact. We are profoundly grateful for the support shown by our key stakeholders since the start of the pandemic, but with so much uncertainty still surrounding the outlook for non-essential retail, we’re now in a position where we need to seek additional support if we are to protect our business.
“The CVA provides us with much-needed flexibility so that we can emerge on the other side of this crisis in the best shape possible.” After 28 years of successfully growing the business, this is not an action that we wished to take. However, although we have seen exceptional growth in our online business, it hasn’t been sufficient to offset the loss of sales from our stores being closed. We remain firmly committed to the high street, and indeed, in the longer term, our strategy is to grow our high street presence and adapt our business model with our concessions partners.”
