BERLIN — Due to the currently difficult consumer climate, German brand Hugo Boss is focusing more firmly on its core menswear business.
Over the second quarter of 2025, the company managed to hold onto growth. The brand saw sales rise 1 percent on a currency adjusted basis to 1.01 billion euros between April and June. This means that over the first half of the year, Hugo Boss tallied 2 billion euros in sales, flat on a currency adjusted basis.
“After a rather challenging start to the year, the second quarter went significantly better for us,” Hugo Boss chief financial officer Yves Mueller said at a press conference in Germany on Tuesday morning. “Of course, sales growth of 1 percent is still not satisfactory. But given the ongoing difficult global consumer climate affecting our entire industry, we consider this a success.”
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It was the company’s mainstay, the more formal Boss menswear, that drove growth in the second quarter. The label accounts for four-fifths of group sales, Mueller pointed out. Sales of Boss menswear rose 5 percent to 808 million euros.
Meanwhile, Boss womenswear sales slipped 8 percent to 62 million euros and sales of Hugo slid 12 percent to 132 million euros.
Development of the two latter categories is not particularly satisfactory, Hugo Boss conceded. “In the current challenging market environment, our primary focus was on strengthening our Boss menswear business further, which we have succeeded in doing,” the company told WWD in an emailed statement.
Boss womenswear and Hugo, the more casual offering that includes sporty looks and denim, are in a “transition phase.” The product categories are still very much on the company’s radar and part of its business, Hugo Boss said, but the group is now working further on the category identities, assessing consumer preferences and streamlining product offerings.
It was also back to basics in terms of sales territories, where Hugo Boss’ all-important home market of Europe, the Middle East and Africa performed best. There sales rose 3 percent, currency adjusted, to 618 million euros.
Hugo Boss reported a slight decline in the U.K. but this was offset by better business in Germany and France.
In the Americas, where Hugo Boss has been pushing to break in and become a 24/7 lifestyle brand, sales grew 2 percent to 236 million euros. When not adjusted for currency effects, they actually fell 6 percent.
After a “softer start” to the year in Canada and the U.S., the company was now seeing gains there. “We saw a significant drop in footfall in malls and outlets,” Mueller elaborated on the North American market. “But that has now normalized somewhat in the second quarter. Overall it’s not an easy business as it stands today, consumer sentiment is still comparatively low.”
But, Mueller said, collections had sold well there and the conversion rate — that is, selling at higher prices as opposed to discounting — was also improving. That makes up for some of the lower footfall and “also shows our collection continues to be well received on the North American continent,” Mueller suggested.
Mueller also addressed potential problems with new tariffs recently set by the U.S. government under President Donald Trump.
“Regarding the recent developments around the 15 percent tariffs for Europe, we would all certainly have wished for something different,” he said. “But these announcements only have a limited impact on us.”
Around 15 percent of the company’s business is done in the U.S., he explained, but most of the products going there are made in Turkey or in Europe, in Portugal or Italy. Only 5 percent comes out of China, which has some of the highest U.S. tariffs in the world.
Hugo Boss is prepared for the 15 percent tariffs on European-made products and with regard to Turkey, tariffs on Turkish goods going into the U.S. were already at 10 percent. “Overall we can absorb this and we’re prepared,” Mueller noted.
The company will be raising prices by low- to midsingle-digit percentages, the executive noted, but not until the end of the year when the spring 2026 collection goes into stores. Unlike other German brands, which have said tariffs mean they’ll only raise prices in the U.S. at first, Hugo Boss will be putting its prices up everywhere.
The Chinese market also remains challenging for Hugo Boss, Mueller continued. “Consumer sentiment in China remains weak and will likely remain that way for some time,” he said. In the Asia-Pacific region, sales fell 5 percent to 124 million euros.
The brightest spot on Hugo Boss’ balance sheet for the second quarter came in terms of earnings before interests and taxes, or EBIT, an important indicator of day-to-day profitability. In the second quarter, Hugo Boss’ EBIT rose 15 percent to 81 million euros, above market consensus. Over the same quarter last year, EBIT fell by 42 percent.
This equals a 2 percent rise in EBIT, in currency adjusted terms, over the first six months of 2025. With a subdued market environment, “we continue to focus on what we can influence ourselves,” Mueller explained. “And that is above all our costs.”
The company had taken its “foot off the gas a little,” when it comes to investing in, for example, retail renovations, Mueller added.
As a result of steady sales during the first half of the year, Hugo Boss confirmed its guidance for the year. The German brand still expects group sales in 2025 to end up somewhere between a fall of 2 percent and an increase of 2 percent, with the total between 4.2 billion euros and 4.4 billion euros. It also forecasts that EBIT will add up to between 380 million euros and 440 million euros for the whole year.
Market analysts from the likes of Citibank, JP Morgan, Jefferies and Baader Bank described Hugo Boss’ second quarter results as “solid” and “reassuring.” The results were slightly above expectations: The consensus had been that Hugo Boss would bring in around 998 million euros in sales over the three months.