Erdem’s CEO on how to thrive as an independent fashion brand

It’s a challenging time to be an independent fashion brand, especially in the UK where Brexit has taken a heavy toll. A number of buzzy London-based brands that were on a promising trajectory a decade ago have since been shuttered, while the collapse of Matches continues to reverberate. Among the success stories is British independent fashion brand Erdem, which celebrates its 20th year in 2025 and is fresh from opening its first store outside of the UK, in Seoul. Working side by side with the brand’s founder Erdem Moralıoğlu to drive its growth strategy, is Philippa Nixon, who joined as its first-ever CEO five years ago. A luxury leader who’s built her experience from the shop floor up at brands including Chloé, Fendi and Louis Vuitton, Nixon is well versed in all things retail, wholesale and e-commerce. Her immediate priorities at Erdem were clear, she told me at the 2024 Vogue Business Executive Summit. “There was a big piece of work to do around diversifying the product,” she recalled. “We had been historically bought as a ready-to-wear brand, plus 90 per cent of our sales were wholesale and the wholesalers were buying us in an occasion-led way. Diversifying meant development into knitwear, into tailoring — which is now our second biggest category — and outerwear. All the things the Erdem woman would wear day in, day out; not just for weddings and occasions. This has really helped grow sales.” As part of Nixon’s ongoing strategy, Erdem unveiled its first leather handbag during its Spring/Summer 2025 show in London this September. It goes on sale in December. Nixon has been working on reducing the brand’s reliance on wholesale and growing the e-commerce channel, which at the time she joined accounted for just 2 per cent of sales. Today, that has risen to 12 per cent. The collapse of Matches — one of Erdem’s biggest wholesale accounts — had a “huge impact”, Nixon said. “We’d worked with them for years and years. We not only lost a lot of money off the bottom line in terms of the sales that they would’ve provided over this financial year, but also we’d created a lot of stock for them. So we had an awful lot of stock on hand that we had not anticipated, which meant we had to find ways to try and sell that through.” The wider uncertainty in wholesale is one of the biggest challenges facing Erdem. “We are not entirely sure what’s going to happen with multi-brand [retailers], particularly the behemoths who buy heavily and deeply into the smaller brands,” Nixon explained. “So we are just following our plan of de-risking those big wholesalers and finding ways to really drive and speak to our own customers directly.” To what extent is the global luxury slowdown impacting the brand? “We’re hearing horror stories from all over the place at the moment,” she said. “I’m pleased to say that Erdem is growing in all markets and in all channels, and we’ve actually not seen a slowdown. We’re pushing into markets that we know are doing well and can do well further down the line. We were not that well distributed globally, so there’s a lot of space for us still to grow.” The US is the brand’s fastest-growing market. “We’ve invested quite heavily there,” said Nixon. “We launched e-commerce [in December 2023], opened a new warehouse and we hope to have a New York flagship store in the fairly near future.” The brand is also growing in Europe and in the UK, although the latter has slowed. Asia is another important market: Erdem opened a 762-square-feet store in luxury shopping mall Shinsegae Gangnam, at the heart of Seoul’s Gangnam district, on 30 August. “The luxury customer there is really interesting,” said Nixon. “They spend more money on luxury goods than any other country in the world, and you really feel that when you’re there. They’re passionate and inquisitive and they love new brands.” There are plans to open more stores beyond London, Seoul and eventually New York: Nixon said the target is seven or eight stores within the next five to six years. Against a challenging market backdrop, Nixon is proud that Erdem remains independent. “With independence comes choice, we’re able to make decisions that we really believe benefit the brand and we’re able to move very quickly once we’ve made those decisions. It feels very entrepreneurial. At a certain point, if we want to open enough doors to allow us to have the retail footprint that we really believe this brand deserves, we may need to take on investment. But for now, we’re growing. We’re ambitious and we keep taking market share.” To watch all of the interviews from this year’s Executive Summit, Members can click here. Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.

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