Not even the Duchess could keep Queen of Prints Orla Kiely going

Global designer Orla Kiely this week closed her retail and wholesale businesses. So what went wrong for arguably the most successful Irish designer of all time, asks Joyce Fegan.

AN OBE before her name, a hat in Sex and the City, movie stars and even royalty as loyal customers, millions of pounds in sales, a darling of Vogue magazine, her logo on an Irish stamp and a collaboration with Citroën, all this, and Orla Kiely has still closed her retail and wholesale businesses.

The news this week, that her parent company Kiely Rowan Plc has ceased trading, comes as a retrospective exhibition of Orla Kiely’s designs takes centre stage at the prestigious Fashion and Textile Museum in London. In what some would see as a pinnacle of success, with the exhibition giving the museum its fastest-selling tickets of all time in terms of advance sales, the news took many by surprise.

For this global designer and household name, with strong sales, what went wrong?

In the year to March 2017 (the latest available accounts for her UK business), Kiely Rowan made sales of £8.3m (€9.3m), up 15% on a year before, but pre-tax profits fell by about a third to £101,000 (€112,663) as interest payments on its debts rose to £221,597 (€246,869). The group’s bank overdraft also more than tripled to £1.9m (€2.1m).

This financial performance was against the backdrop of a rapidly changing retail landscape with shoppers migrating from the high street to the world wide web. It’s estimated that upwards of 30% or more of the world’s retail economy will be transacted online by 2025. This might be part of the business’s decision to cease trading.

Kiely has however, not shut down completely.

Her retail business, which consists of a store in Kildare Village Outlet and two more in central London, have closed, as has her wholesale and online enterprises.

An Orla Kiely small spot flower stem plant pot featuring the brand’s leaf stem print.

However, the brand itself will go on, through what’s known as licensing agreements.

This is where big brands offer their trademark to other firms to make different types of products. The second company, known as the licensee, manufactures and distributes the new product lines.

This shift to “licensing” has become a trend in the fashion industry as their traditional wholesale revenue model began to fail.

While Orla Kiely’s retail and wholesale operations enter liquidation, taking 40 or so jobs with them, licensing has been a key component of her business for years. In 2009, when she was shortlisted for Ernst Young (International) Entrepreneur of the Year Award, sales from licensing in 2008 had been valued at £14m (€15.5m).

A spokesman for Kiely Rowan confirmed to the Irish Examiner that her thriving brand and its leaf stem print will live on.

“The retail and fashion business is going into liquidation (ie, the three shops and the online business), but they will continue to sell accessories and homewares — via licensing arrangements — through other distribution partners,” the spokesman said.

Some have argued that Orla Kiely is the most successful Irish designer of all time, being worn by the likes of Kiera Knightley, Scarlett Johansson and Emma Thompson.

And on several occasions over the last six years, Kate Middleton has championed the brand, wearing dresses and coats by the designer and triggering frenzied sell-outs.

These were dizzying heights for a journey that began for Kiely at the age of 12, when a nun, her art teacher, spotted her talent for design.

“She really believed in me. I never really saw it in myself. She always used to think I had talent. And I don’t know that I ever, at that age, saw it in myself,” the designer said of her encouraging teacher.

Kiely stuck with her talent and studied textiles in the National College of Art and Design, graduating in 1982 and heading off to New York.

Orla Kiely sheets, with the leaf stem print that has become so recognisable as part of the brand.

On her return to Dublin, her father let her and her two friends use the upstairs room in the then family pub, Kiely’s in Donnybrook, as a temporary studio, and she spent six weeks getting her portfolio in order before trying her luck in London.

Kiely was accepted to study at the Royal College of Art and after her graduation show, Harrods commissioned a collection of hats from her.

It was at this point that her father stepped in, with what is now a piece of Irish fashion folklore.

“Every woman’s wearing a bag,” he said, “they’re not all wearing a hat, but they’re all carrying bags.”

The rest is history as they say, with her business Kiely Rowan becoming a public limited company in 2004.

Now after nearly two decades of trading, Kiely Rowan is no more, leaving many heads spinning and speculating as to what’s next for the brand.