River Island has threatened to send back clothing orders to suppliers over quality and sizing issues.
The fashion retailer is understood to have requested discounts on goods that it claims have not met its standards, warning that it will send orders back to suppliers if they do not oblige, The Times reported.
One supplier said River Island had accused it of sending a shipment of tops worth hundreds of thousands of pounds that were “ever so slightly too short in length. They threatened to send the whole lot back if we didn’t agree to a discount.”
While another supplier claimed the retailer’s requests for retrospective discounts — discounts given after an invoice has been raised — had recently “gone into overdrive”.
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River Island is understood to have raised its invoice discounts from 5% to 10%, which has upset suppliers.
“They’ve become very hot on open costings,” one said. “If we give them a price for a product, they want to know how we’re breaking it down and if we’re costing in that 10%.”
One head office employee at River Island said that Jane Eskriett, the retailer’s new co-managing director, had been “wildly shaking up” its supplier strategy, “getting rid of a lot of suppliers and bringing in new ones”.
Eskriett joined the business last year from Boohoo alongside Richard Grainger, her co-managing director, who previously worked at Next.
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