AI Magazine Issue 1 2017

Acquisition International - January 2017 31 A Company with Style R&S Retail Group NV were honoured to receive the Belgium Consumer Goods Deal of the Year for the FNG Group award for their excellent work in the retail sector. The firm’s CFO Rens van de Schoor spoke to us about the business and the wider industry they are a part of. R&S Retail Group NV work in the fashion industry and are especially concerned with apparel and shoes in the Benelux region. They focus on a market that is under pressure, but the firm groups a number of fashion brands. The CFO then refers to a fashion company (Miss Etam, appr. 100 stores) that went into bankruptcy, but R&S Retail Group NV started the firm again from scratch. After that, they took over another firm (FNG Group) who has been running for 13 years, selling fashion brands in the Benelux region. “The latest acquisition (Brantano) was in January 2016 when another firm (Macintosh Retail Group) went bankrupt, and we bought the company. While we are primarily in the fashion industry, we seek those target companies who have businesses that are adjacent to each other which gives us synergies to work with.” All of the firm’s clients are the retail industry, indeed there are 4-5 million of them which is an impressive figure in its own right. When thinking about what is needed for a transaction to be a success, van de Schoor reveals that his firm “looked into situations that were distressed and where most Anglo- Saxon companies tried to make a bargain with the administrator, we actually approached deals as a strategic party, who sees that the stakeholders are actually benefitting from a sell-through.” In terms of the challenges the firm faces, these are quite obvious according to van de Schoor, “because sales in apparel and shoes is actually moving fast from offline to online and that is a challenge for the whole industry. The second challenge is that branches are actually becoming more interlinked, so everybody is moving into each other’s business.” Concerning the firm’s approach to staff, van de Schoor says that they are not a fashion or a shoes firm, but a people company. Not only do we work with people, but we work for them. Not only managers but all employees are a critical essence of the business.” Looking to the future, van de Schoor encourages us to take a look back over the last three years, and how the firm has started from scratch and now makes over €450 million in turnover per year so some conservation would not hurt. “We need to look for the synergies that we assume there to be, so we are integrating logistics, ICT and other systems. On the other hand, the market is challenging today and I think that if some of our competitors are looking for somebody to team up with, then I think we should be open for those opportunities.” Company: R&S Retail Group NV, CFO Name: Rens van de Schoor Web: www.fng.eu Address: Postbus 33 1110 AA Diemen Phone: +31 (0) 205 698 503 R&S Retail Group A Company with Style R DY160022