City Chic Collective () (CCC), founded as Miller's Retail in 1992, and rebranded in December 2006 to Specialty Fashion Group, is an Australian retail clothing company. It is headquartered in the Sydney suburb of

Alexandria Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandri ...

Miller's Retail

Miller's Retail Ltd. was an Australian company that distributed women's apparel and accessories and was one of the country's largest retailers. It was founded by Gary Perlstein and Ian Miller in 1992. It was listed on the

Australian Stock Exchange Australian Securities Exchange Ltd or ASX, is an Australian public company that operates Australia's primary securities exchange, the Australian Securities Exchange (sometimes referred to outside of Australia as, or confused within Australia as ...

and had a market capitalisation of $360 million as at March, 2006. It grew in part through acquisitions, including the Katies womenswear chain from

Coles Myer Coles Group Limited is an Australian public company operating several retail chains. Its chief operations are primarily concerned with the sale of food and groceries through its flagship supermarket chain Coles Supermarkets, and the sale of li ...

(1999), and Crazy Clark's and

Go-Lo Go-Lo was a chain of Australian discount variety stores with hundreds of stores throughout Australia. It was part of the largest discount retailer group in Australia. It was owned by Jan Cameron's Retail Adventures along with Sam's Warehouse, ...

stores in 2000. Its sales for the year ending 30 June 2005 were $1.12 billion, with a net loss after tax of $103.4 million. This substantial loss was an unusual event for Miller's Retail and reflected considerable financial restructuring, including the revaluation of its businesses in Discount Variety. At the same time, the company told the market it had excessive inventory levels and pledged to address that, as well as to review buying practices in the future to avoid similar errors. In its Apparel Division, Miller's Retail traded under the brands '' Miller's Fashion Club'', ''Katies'', ''Crossroads'' and ''1626'', which all sell women's clothing, with a total of over 700 stores. In November, 2005, it sold its Discount Variety Division, which owned ''Go-Lo'', ''Crazy Clark's'', ''Look Sharp Concepts'' and ''Chickenfeed'', which had a total of 335 stores at the time of the sale. Miller's Retail sold its interest in the discount variety businesses after a

price war A price is the (usually not negative) quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services. In some situations, the price of production has a different name. If the product is a "good" in the ...

with competitors had a major impact on the profits of the division. Private equity investor Catalyst Investment Manager and CHAMP acquired the group, the new entity being called Australian Discount Retail. The company was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in 1998. Its founder, Ian Miller, left the Managing Director's position in 2003, although continued for a time as Managing Director of Apparel Division and remained an executive director of the company. In December 2006 it was renamed to Specialty Fashion Group.

Miller's Fashion Club

Millers Retail's core business was the Miller's Fashion Club, a club or

loyalty program A loyalty program is a marketing strategy designed to encourage customers to continue to shop at or use the services of a business associated with the program. Today, such programs cover most types of commerce, each having varying features and ...

, which had more than 2.8 million members across Australia and New Zealand.

Specialty Fashion Group

In July 2018, the company sold five of its brands; Autograph, Crossroads, Katies,

Millers A miller is a person who operates a mill, a machine to grind a grain (for example corn or wheat) to make flour. Milling is among the oldest of human occupations. "Miller", "Milne" and other variants are common surnames, as are their equivalents ...

and Rivers, to Noni B (later renamed to

Mosaic Brands A mosaic is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly pop ...

) leaving only one brand, City Chic, in its portfolio. The remaining operations were rebranded City Chic Collective in November 2018. In October 2019, CCC purchased the

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain managem ...

assets of Avenue Stores from its administrator.City Chic broadens US reach with e-commerce acquisition
''

Inside Retailing ''Inside Retail'' is an International trade magazine and websites for the retailing industry, published by Octomedia. It started as ''Inside Retail Weekly'', launched as a printed weekly newspaper back in the early 1970s in Australia followed by ...

'' 8 October 2019

References

External links

Miller's Retail profile on Linkedin
Companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange Clothing retailers of Australia Companies based in Sydney Online retailers of Australia