Claire's and The Original Factory Shop Both Collapsed This Year. Together They Cost Close to 2,500 Jobs.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
In short. Claire's UK & Ireland and The Original Factory Shop, two unrelated high street chains bought out of trouble in 2025 by the same turnaround investor, Modella Capital, both collapsed into administration again in January 2026. The Original Factory Shop found no buyer and closed every one of its 137 UK stores on 4 April, at a cost of around 1,180 jobs [[1]][[2]]. Claire's closed all 154 of its standalone UK and Ireland stores on 27 April, at a cost of around 1,300 jobs [[3]][[4]][[5]]. Between them, close to 2,500 jobs ended inside four months. Neither event has been in this ledger until today.
Two companies, one owner, one January
Modella Capital built a reputation in 2025 as the investor who kept failing high street names alive: it bought The Original Factory Shop out of administration in February 2025, and bought Claire's UK & Ireland out of its first collapse in September 2025, months after the brand's American parent had filed for bankruptcy [[6]]. Neither rescue lasted a year.
The Factory Shop Ltd, trading as The Original Factory Shop and headquartered in Burnley, filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators on 5 January 2026 [[6]]. A London Gazette notice confirms the formal appointment of Richard Harrison and James Clark of Interpath Advisory on 28 January 2026 [[1]]. Interpath initially kept all stores trading while it looked for a buyer [[2]]. None came. The Grocer reported on 15 April that all 137 remaining stores, and the Bolton head office, had closed on 4 April, with around 1,180 jobs lost; the administrators said plainly that "without any viable offers to take the business forward, it was not possible for The Original Factory Shop to continue trading" [[2]]. Companies House still lists the company as in administration.
CAUKI Ltd, trading as Claire's UK & Ireland, filed its own notice of intention on 5 January 2026, separately from TOFS but within days of it [[6]]. A London Gazette notice confirms the formal appointment of Philip Dakin, Benjamin Wiles and Janet Burt of Kroll Advisory on 26 January 2026 [[3]]. This was Claire's second UK collapse within six months; CAUKI was the entity Modella had used to buy the brand out of its first failure the previous September. Kroll confirmed on 27 April that all 154 standalone Claire's stores in the UK and Ireland had ceased trading with immediate effect, at a cost of around 1,300 store jobs [[4]][[5]]. Around 350 Claire's concessions, including many inside Asda stores, and the head office were not part of this closure. By May 2026, a separate buyer had acquired the Claire's brand name and a reported handful of stores under a new company, Claire's Europe, with plans to reopen some locations; this ledger has found no verified count of how many of those stores are actually trading as of November, so it is not logged as a delivered gain.
Neither company has given AI, automation or technology any role in its failure. The stated causes throughout are the same as most high street collapses this ledger tracks: online competition, fast fashion, and the arithmetic of running physical stores that are not making enough money to keep the lights on.
The number this ledger cannot give precisely
The 1,300 figure for Claire's is reported everywhere as a combined UK and Ireland total; no source, including Kroll's own administrators, has published a UK-only breakdown. Almost 20 Claire's stores were trading in the Republic of Ireland as of the brand's first collapse in 2025, out of the 154 that closed in April [[7]]. Doing the arithmetic from that single stale figure would put the UK share at roughly nine in ten jobs, but that is this ledger's own estimate from a number taken at a different point in time, not a sourced UK figure, so it is not used to adjust the count. The row below logs 1,300 as reported, flagged as a combined ceiling that may slightly overstate the UK-only loss, and it will be corrected in place if anyone ever publishes the split.
How the ledger logs it
The Original Factory Shop: a loss of 1,180, graded REPORTED, status departed, dated 28 January 2026 (the date of the Gazette-confirmed administrator appointment; the closure itself followed on 4 April). Claire's UK & Ireland: a loss of 1,300 (UK and Ireland combined, logged as a ceiling on the UK figure), graded REPORTED, status departed, dated 26 January 2026 (the date of the Gazette-confirmed administrator appointment; the closure itself followed on 27 April). Both are graded REPORTED on the strength of a Gazette administrator-appointment notice, fetched and confirmed directly, plus the administrators' own on-record confirmation that trading had stopped. Both are backdated to January, when the event that this ledger records actually happened, not to today.
Both rows are nine months late. This ledger had no row for either company before this session, despite two Gazette notices and national retail-press coverage of both collapses and both closures. They were found through a deliberate second-pass sweep of retail trade press rather than through any reader flagging them, which is worse: nobody told us because this ledger did not have the reach to find it on its own the first time. The gap is recorded here rather than quietly filled, because a ledger that only shows the losses it happened to notice in time is not the ledger this site promises to be.
What happens next
Watch for any verified figure on how many Claire's Europe stores are actually trading under the May 2026 revival deal; if one appears with a credible store or jobs count, it becomes its own row, logged as a gain against the backdrop of this loss, not folded into it. Beyond that, both companies' administrations remain technically open at Companies House. Nothing currently suggests either chain reopens in its old form.
Sources
- The Gazette, Appointment of Administrators notice, The Factory Shop Limited (company no. 04176887), published 29 January 2026. https://www.thegazette.co.uk/notice/5045232
- The Grocer, "The Original Factory Shop closes for good as administrators fail to find a buyer," 15 April 2026. https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/
- The Gazette, Appointment of Administrators notice, CAUKI Limited (company no. 16202455, trading as Claire's UK & Ireland), published 28 January 2026. https://www.thegazette.co.uk/notice/5042555
- Drapers, "Claire's confirms 1,300 job cuts as store estate shutters," 27 April 2026. https://www.drapersonline.com/news/claires-confirms-1300-job-cuts-as-store-estate-shutters
- The Journal, "Claire's Accessories shuts all Ireland and UK stores with 1,300 redundancies," 27 April 2026. https://www.thejournal.ie/claires-accessories-shuts-all-ireland-and-uk-stores-7025632-Apr2026/
- TheBusinessDesk.com, "Claire's and The Original Factory Shop both file notices to appoint administrators," 5 January 2026. https://www.thebusinessdesk.com/northwest/news/2164993
- The Irish Times, "Claire's closes all of its remaining Irish stores," 28 April 2026. https://www.irishtimes.com/life-style/fashion/2026/04/28/claires-to-close-last-irish-stores-as-teen-retailer-muscled-out-by-online-fast-fashion/