The original Biba store lasted only 12 years, but made an incredible impact on the fashion and the retailing worlds. The first store to utilise low lighting and loud music, the first the have communal changing rooms, the first to sell seemingly unrelated ancillary products like diaries, the list of innovations made by this team of two (Barbara Hulanicki and her husband Stephen Fitz-Simon) is as long as your arm. So why then did it fall? Well, they never moved the business over from its original sole trader status, which it's always advised to do when a business starts making anywhere near serious money, and it left them vulnerable to the affects of bankruptcy. So, when they made one catalogue that didn't sell as well as the others, it left them desperate, soon establishing Biba Ltd. with three other partners who at first seemed great, but soon turned sour.
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Affiliate Links for Books Used:
Hulanicki (2014) The Biba Years: https://amzn.to/3zv0bxL
Hulanicki (2018) A to Biba: https://amzn.to/3WcEQSt
Gonzalez (2018) Chronicles of a Fashion Buyer: https://amzn.to/3VXRMdA
Thomas & Turner (2024) Welcome to Big Biba: https://amzn.to/4cM6sUJ