International Clothing Designs is a UK-based supplier to the fashion retail industry. It was founded by

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

Richard Caring Richard Allan Caring (born 4 June 1948) is a British businessman. He initially built a business, International Clothing Designs, supplying Hong Kong-manufactured fashion to UK retailers. After surviving the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, he di ...

in the 1970s and initially imported mass-produced clothing from manufacturers in Hong Kong into the UK market.

History

Having grown a women's fashion supply business in the UK during the 1960s, Caring visited

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

in 1971. Labour and materials were cheaper than in Britain, and Caring worked with local manufacturers to develop mass production techniques that delivered quality results.China Influence. Richard Caring. As a result, he became one of the first western

high fashion ''Haute couture'' (; ; French for 'high sewing', 'high dressmaking') is the creation of exclusive custom-fitted high-end fashion design that is constructed by hand from start-to-finish. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Paris became th ...

buyers to develop localised

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

relationships, and returned to the UK to sell the new high quality but cheaper garments to UK

retailer Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and t ...

s. International Clothing Designs (ICD) was established to exploit the new opportunity, and Caring moved his family permanently to Hong Kong in 1979. At its height ICD supplied 70% of the clothing sold by British high street retailers, supplying

Marks & Spencer Marks and Spencer Group plc (commonly abbreviated to M&S and colloquially known as Marks's or Marks & Sparks) is a major British multinational retailer with headquarters in Paddington, London that specialises in selling clothing, beauty, home ...

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and

Next Next may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film * ''Next'' (1990 film), an animated short about William Shakespeare * ''Next'' (2007 film), a sci-fi film starring Nicolas Cage * '' Next: A Primer on Urban Painting'', a 2005 documentary film Lit ...

. Through ICD and its trading, Caring met

Philip Green Sir Philip Nigel Ross Green (born 15 March 1952) is a British businessman who was the chairman of the retail company the Arcadia Group. He owned the high street clothing retailers Topshop, Topman and Miss Selfridge from 2002 to 2020. As of Ma ...

, the fashion retailer, and became the dominant supplier to Green's

Arcadia Group Arcadia Group Ltd (formerly Arcadia Group plc and, until 1998, Burton Group plc) was a British multinational retailing company headquartered in London, England. It was best known for being the previous parent company of British Home Stores (BH ...

, which included

Dorothy Perkins Dorothy Perkins is an online British women's fashion brand based in the United Kingdom. Formerly a store chain, it sold both its own range of clothes and branded fashion goods until February 2021, when it became part of Boohoo.com, having been ...

Topshop TOPSHOP (originally Top Shop) is a British fashion brand for women's clothing, shoes and accessories. It was part of the Arcadia Group, controlled by Sir Philip Green, but went into administration in late 2020 before being purchased by ASOS (r ...

and Top Man. ICD had majority holdings in 17 companies, but by 2005 only two were active, and turnover at the holding company, once over £100m, had fallen to £85.5m, and to £74.2m a year later - though "a complex web of businesses, many of which lead to offshore holding companies,

ake Ake (or Aké in Spanish orthography) is an archaeological site of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization. It's located in the municipality of Tixkokob, in the Mexican state of Yucatán; 40 km (25 mi) east of Mérida, Yucatán. The name ...

it hard to detect Caring's full earnings from the fashion world." During the 2000s, ICD reduced its scale, but in 2009 still employed some 250 people. For 15 years up to about 2005, fellow fashion retail businessman Phil Wrigley (chairman of New Look) regarded Caring's business as "a very significant, if not the most significant, supplier of apparel to the UK". Then, as retailers began to deal directly with suppliers, ICD scaled down from 27 clothing divisions to eight by 2010.

References

{{fashion-company-stub Privately held companies of the United Kingdom Clothing companies of the United Kingdom Clothing companies of England