Sheffield-founded activewear retailer, Lucy Locket Loves has entered voluntary liquidation, owing just under £900,000.
It follows supply chain issues, warehouse floods that caused downtime and lost stock, rising import costs that impacted margins, and the cost of living crisis hitting revenue.
The Dronfield-based business was also affected by a change from monthly to quarterly rent payments for its warehouse, which it was unable to meet.
Founder Lucy Arnold said: “Firstly, I want to apologise to everyone impacted by this, especially our customers and the LLL Team. Despite everyone’s hard work, the challenges of the past 18 months were overwhelming, leading us to enter voluntary liquidation on May 28, 2024.
“Supply chain issues, warehouse floods that caused downtime and lost stock, rising import costs that slashed our margins, and the ongoing cost of living crisis hit our revenue hard and disrupted our operations. These essentially made our traditional business model obsolete.
“In December 2023, we managed to negotiate monthly rent payments for our warehouse, but by May 2024, the owners insisted on reverting to full quarterly payments, which we couldn’t meet. This led to their abrupt decision to take control of our warehouse on May 10th with no notice, disrupting our operations and leaving us without working capital.
“Facing no operational ability and mounting financial obligations, we made the difficult decision to enter voluntary liquidation.
“This has been incredibly distressing, particularly for our team, who were reluctantly made redundant. We deeply regret the impact on our staff and their families and I can never say sorry enough for how abruptly this happened. This has personally been the most upsetting part of this process.”
The business aims to relaunch the Locket Loves website in Summer with a new look, operational hub, and new leggings designs.
In 2020, Arnold was included in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list.
