Swindon & Wiltshire News
Spirit of the age: fashion chain enters administration
Award-winning independent fashion chain Spirit has gone into administration, with the loss of around 20 jobs.
The firm – which had branches in Devizes and Bradford on Avon, and until recently Marlborough and Frome – was well known for its high-end lines appealing to a market of thirty- to fifty-somethings.
The Frome outlet has continued as a clothing boutique under new ownership, while the leases on the Marlborough shop has been taken by a gifts supplier.
Sprit opened its first boutique in 1999. In 2010 readers of the Gazette & Herald newspaper voted the Devizes store The Best Boutique in Wiltshire.
This week, the firm appointed Bristol-based Mazars as liquidators.
In November, Chamber News reported how the Marlborough branch was looking to sublet the top floor of its two-storey premises in marlborough High Street in a bid to manage the £31,500 PA rent.
Proprietor Rose Webster said: “People look at Marlborough, they see the grand High Street and the College and they assume there are millions of shoppers. There aren´t; and the economic downturn since 2008 has had a serious knock on profits.”
