Big tits = Biggger sales, profits at La Senza as founder sells out at the top of the market

Theo Paphitis, Limassol born director of Millwall FC , one of BBC's Dragons in the Dragons' Den business investment programme is said to have bought the ailing La Senza for £1.00. This week he is rumoured to have sold its chain of 118 Europe wide shops for £100Mn.The company has affiliates in Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Estonia, Malta and Gibraltar, and is expected to focus on southern Europe markets including Spain.(Pic Senza Summer Sale ...Cherry Gingham Bra was £16 50% off now £5)

To Y/E , April 2005, La Senza made profits of £7.4m, which is expected to have grown on sales increased 22% to £94Mn. this year.

The buyers are Lion Capital who are the renamed European arm of Hicks, Muse, Furst and Taite, (who fucked up big style over Christie Tyler the furniture manufactueres for M&S and Ikea) which owns 118 shops across Europe who have been talking to La Senza on an exclusive basis for a number of months.

Lion bought restaurant chain Wagamama for a reported £102.5m last July and this purchase is their 2nd move into retail.

Robert Darwent, Lion Capital's founding partner is quoted in the Daily Telegraph,"We plan to expand the business in the UK, and also continue and accelerate the brand's expansion into southern continental Europe."

Theo tells me he will still act in a consulting capacity with a minority 10% holding, and will also be active in the Rymans stationery chain,which he owns. He also has a stake, alongside fellow "Dragon" Peter Jones in the Red Letter Days gift-experience company.

Tabloid editors were delighted that La Senza publicised "research" they had undertaken this week that showed their sales of bras with DD, E and F cup sizes have risen by a third year on year since 2003. In contrast, bras with cup sizes A to D have gone up by just 8%.Women's body shapes have also changed, with waist and bust-lines expanding by 6.5ins and 1.5ins, respectively, since the 1950s.

Cue the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS)to explain that in the UK the number of women having surgery to boost breast size has more than doubled in 12 months with 5,655 breast enlargement operations last yearcompared with just less than 2,000 the year previously. Coincidentally many women are now travelling to Cyprus to combine a holiday with the operation to return , tanned and "body tuned", and amply filling out their bikin at several clinics, here

TRIVIAL FACTOID ABOUT LADIES LINGERIE


Sixty years ago the bikini named after Bikini Atoll, the Pacific Ocean nuclear test site made its debut on a Paris runway via the well-endowed frame of a nude dancer from a casino, by Louis Reard, an auto engineer who had taken over his family's lingerie business. It is said he used the name in competition with another firm who called their swimwear "Le Atome" the smallest known thing in the Universe.

In 1951 the bikini was banned from the Miss World beauty pageant but who will ever forget Raquel Welch in her fur bikini in "One Million Years B.C."(1966).