A British fashion retailer, founded in Taunton in 1969, with a head office in Weymouth and shops and an online store selling womenswear, menswear and teen fashion.
New Look is a British high-street fashion retailer. It sells clothing for women, men and teenagers through shops across the UK and through its website. Wikipedia gives approximately 570 locations in 2021, but that is likely to have changed since then. It is one of the best-known fashion names on British high streets, particularly for affordable everyday clothes.
The company was founded by Tom Singh in Taunton, Somerset, in 1969. It grew over the following decades into a national chain, and in 2004 it was taken private by Mr Singh, chief executive Phil Wrigley and investors. In 2015 it was acquired by Brait, a South African investment company. In 2020 it used the US Chapter 15 process during the pandemic, and in February 2025 it announced that it would leave the Irish market. We did not find a mission or values statement in the sources we read, so we have not invented one.
New Look's corporate head office is in Weymouth, Dorset, where it runs its corporate services, and it has a London base that houses its creative, digital and other departments. Its shops are on high streets and in shopping centres across the UK. We could not find a current headcount; Wikipedia says the company once had more than 18,000 staff but marks that claim as needing a citation, so we have not relied on it.
We found very little about the company's day-to-day culture in the sources we read. A search result from ITV West Country described Tom Singh's company as a local success story, and a profile at the British Asian Trust lists him as an adviser, but we did not read either in full, so we cannot say what they cover. If you want to find out what it is like to work there, a good first step is a conversation with store colleagues or a look at its own website.
A fashion retailer of this size employs a wide range of people. Head-office teams include designers, buyers, merchandisers who plan stock, marketing and e-commerce staff, finance and people teams, and technology staff. Across the country, shops need managers, sales colleagues and visual merchandisers. Weymouth is on the Dorset coast, which makes it an unusual place for a major fashion head office and potentially attractive to people who want a career in retail outside the big cities.
Website: www.newlook.com
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