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Ultra-cheap Chinese fashion retailer Shein’s local operation has raked in nearly $1 billion in sales and tripled its profits in 2023 as cost-of-living pressures drive budget-conscious young parents to the fast-fashion behemoth to fill their wardrobes.

According to documents filed to the corporate regulator, Shein’s revenue hit $978.9 million and generated a 307.7 per cent lift in profits to $10.6 million last year, making it one of the biggest clothing retailers of the country since its entry into the Australian market less than three years ago.

Roy Morgan retail and consumer trends expert Laura Demasi said the growth of the ecommerce player, which has become a global phenomenon for selling huge volumes of clothing priced at a few dollars, had taken the Australian market by surprise.

“Few in the retail scene and more broadly in business would have ever predicted that a retailer of this nature – ultra-cheap, fast fashion from China – would have established a foothold of this magnitude in Australia,” she said.

“They come in at a time when retail is under immense pressure, and then they buck the trend and go in the opposite direction and grow. That is extraordinary.”

Roy Morgan, which has been tracking the growth of Shein as well as rivals Temu and Amazon Australia, estimates that 800,000 Australians are shopping with Shein a month. In a few short years, an estimated 70 per cent to 90 per cent of online shoppers have become aware of Shein and Temu, with 20 per cent of online shoppers having tried Shein at least once.

“The brand awareness is pretty extraordinary,” said Demasi. “[Shein has] about the same awareness that The Iconic has. The only [businesses] that have higher brand awareness are David Jones, Myer, Kmart – their brand awareness is like 90 per cent, just to put that into context.”

Women’s clothing comprises the majority of Shein’s sales, with customers flocking to the online site for its breadth and range of products and free and fast delivery.

Key demographics that make up Shein’s customer base are families with children aged under 16, which represent just over a third (34.2 per cent) of shoppers despite only being 23 per cent of Australia’s population. This demographic has also pulled back more significantly on discretionary spending such as clothing, making Shein appealing as an affordable option.

“This is a cohort in the population which is most under pressure right now. They are always under time pressure, so the convenience of online shopping will always be attractive to parents of young children. Particularly right now, they’re under pressure financially,” Demasi said.

Another key demographic for Shein is those who live in larger households of five people or more, making up 23.3 per cent of Shein shoppers, according to Roy Morgan.

“Five years ago, this economic climate looked different; I don’t know if we would have seen this phenomenon. It’s definitely created a landscape where a platform like Shein with an offer that we’ve never really seen before, really ultra-cheap clothing, has thrived,” said Demasi.

However, despite Shein’s popularity, one in 10 shoppers say they wouldn’t shop there again amid concerns about low quality and ethics.

The retailer, which according to ASIC documents has five Australian employees, paid $4.56 million in tax in 2023, up from $1.13 million the prior year, with $16 million cash in the bank.

It has listed a coworking space in Melbourne as its registered office, and senior branding specialist Jie Ji is listed as the company’s sole director.

Shein did not respond to requests for comment.

Shein was founded in China in 2008 and became the world’s largest fashion retailer in 2022. The company is headquartered in Singapore. The combined net worth of its four founders – chief executive Xu Yangtian, Molly Miao, Gu Xiaoqing and Ren Xiaoqing – was estimated at nearly $US40 billion ($62 billion) in late 2022.

Key to the company’s success is the speed of its algorithms, which pick up shifting consumer tastes and preferences and adjust supply chains almost instantaneously using artificial intelligence.

Shein has attracted criticism for its poor labour conditions in factories it partners with, overproduction of poor quality garments and the use of cotton from a Chinese region accused of using forced labour.

The Chinese giant, which was initially looking at an IPO in the US, is reportedly days away from confirming it will float on the London Stock Exchange.

The rapid growth of Temu, the online megastore that sells general merchandise including kitchen appliances, electronics, tools, car accessories and novelty items, has also forced Shein to start expanding its range of products outside women’s clothing and is courting brands such as Colgate-Palmolive and toy maker Hasbro, Reuters reported.

“We expect their revenue to grow into the future purely because they’re selling more and more types of categories,” said Demasi.

Online-only retailers Amazon, Shein and Temu are disrupting Australian retail to the tune of $8 billion in combined annual sales.

This is according to new data from Roy Morgan, which showed that the trio has driven an overall online spending increase of 12 per cent in the last six months compared to six months earlier.

In the year to March 2024, there was around $60 billion spent online in non-food categories. Despite a flat retail market overall, online spending in the six months to March 2024 was almost $32 billion – up 12 per cent on the six months to September 2023, which was then up $28 billion. 

This level of increase was not seen in the offline retail spending figures for these periods.

Speaking on Amazon's surge, Roy Morgan’s retail, social and consumer trends expert Laura Demasi confirmed that the US-born business has doubled its customer base in Australia over the last three years.

“Year-on-year, Amazon sales are up 6 per cent, and in the last six months to March 2024, it also enjoyed exceptional growth of 17 per cent on the previous six months,” Demasi said.

“Currently, 3.4 million Australians shop on Amazon in an average month, helping the online giant reach $5.6 billion in sales in Australia.”

Demasi added that Amazon now commands almost a tenth of all the retail dollars spent online in Australia. The online retailer is now among the top five retailers in the country for non-food categories - not far behind Kmart, Bunnings and Big W. Its biggest categories are books and electrical. 

The cost-of-living crisis has also created the “perfect storm” for the significant rise of ultra-cheap Chinese players Shein and Temu. According to Roy Morgan data, both have two million Australian shoppers each month. 

“Temu particularly has caught everybody by surprise coming literally out of nowhere to win 1.4 million Shoppers in an average month, putting it on track to earn $1.4 billion in sales,” Demasi said. “Incredibly, Temu now has as many or more customers as some of our biggest national retailers.”

Research shows that much of Shein and Temu’s success in Australia is the result of massive media investment and social media marketing. Demasi said this has driven unparalleled levels of brand awareness.

“Temu is reported to have spent $3-$4 billion on marketing in 2023 globally,” Demasi said. “As a result, now 91 per cent of online shoppers are aware of Temu and 70 per cent of Shein, motivating huge numbers of people to trial them.”

Women's clothing is by far the biggest category for both Shein and Temu, according to Demasi, with more than half a million people buying on Temu each month and more than 700,000 on Shein. Young families make up nearly a third of Shein shoppers, with large households making up less than a quarter. Large households also make up 22 per cent of Temu shoppers, while older households are the largest cohort for Temu at 23.5 per cent.

Demasi said both pureplay retailers pose a direct threat to established retail brands, and not just discount stores, with research showing that shoppers, on average, are twice as more likely to shop on Shein and Temu compared to local retailers such as The Reject Shop, Best & Less, David Jones and Mecca. 

For Mecca in particular, the average Australian choosing to shop on Shein is 261 per cent more likely to do so.

Australia’s online fashion sales have dropped by 8.7 per cent for the full year 2023 to $9.6 billion, down from $10.5 billion in 2022.

This is according to Australia Post’s 2024 Inside Australian Online Shopping Report.

The fashion category plunge was one key driver in an overall online spending drop of 1.2 per cent for 2023 to $63.6 billion, with the home and garden sector producing the second-largest percentage drop of 7.6 per cent, but the largest amount drop of $1.3 billion to $16 billion.

These declines were offset by a 9.1 per cent boost in variety stores and a 2.4 per cent lift in food and liquor purchases.

Cost-of-living pressures driving more cautious spending in 2023 has also highlighted a clear generational gap in spending habits. Millennials (or Gen Y) spent more than any other generation, at $22.1 billion, despite a 2 per cent drop in spending for the year. 

Gen X spent $17.47 billion online, a lift of 1 per cent from last year, while Baby Boomer spending lifted 7 per cent to $12.5 billion. 

Gen Z spent the least in 2023 at $10.64 billion, a double-digit drop of 11 per cent from the year before.

Despite the overall dip, the online shopping report found that 9.5 million households received a parcel in 2023, up by 1.4 per cent year-on-year (YoY), with over 1.5 million more Australians shopping online compared to 2019.

“Australians are shopping online more often, with 1 in 7 households shopping weekly,” Australia Post executive GM of parcel, post and e-commerce Gary Starr said. “While basket sizes were smaller this year, the increasing trend in repeat shopping highlights the reliance on eCommerce in everyday life. 

“This year, online sales events accelerated in popularity, almost becoming traditions for Aussie shoppers. The Black Friday sales event alone saw an 88% jump in online purchases, compared to 2019 and retailers were quick to capitalise.”

“The success of sales events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday ultimately contributed to Australia Post achieving its biggest eCommerce peak period ever, delivering nearly 100 million parcels in November and December.”

Across the country, West Australians embraced the online shopping trend with the strongest YoY growth in number of online purchases of the states/territories at 5.1 per cent. This was closely followed by the Northern Territory (4.6 per cent) and Queensland and Tasmania (4.3 per cent each). 

Rural Australia reported a larger increase in online shopping activity since 2019, up 18 per cent, compared to metropolitan areas which had lifted by 16 per cent.

Victoria and New South Wales both saw drops in online spending, down 1 per cent and 2.1 per cent respectively.

According to the report, these decreases seem to match a trend where online shopping is going back to normal after an unprecedented surge during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amazon’s Australian business raked in more than $6 billion in sales last year, with its fast-growing retail business and cloud computing division both growing more than 20 per cent year over year.

Amazon Web Services and Amazon Commercial Services – the company’s retail business – both generated more than $3 billion in revenue for the first time in 2023, accounts lodged with the corporate regulator show.

The online retail giant’s total sales for the 2023 calendar year climbed 18 per cent to $3.1 billion, while its net loss of $8.84 million for 2023 was down from a loss of $32.74 million in 2022.

It follows a strong year in 2022, when revenue rose 50 per cent year on year, surpassing $2.6 billion, following investments to double its distribution capacity last year to more than 330,000 square metres, enabling faster delivery.

Amazon’s online store accounted for the bulk of group revenues as net sales rose 21 per cent $1.57 billion, up from 1.29 billion, previously.

Amazon entered Australia in late 2017 to the fear of many local retailers that lagged in terms of online and digital investment. The company has recently expanded its one-day delivery to another five cities, Brisbane, Geelong, Gosford, Newcastle and Wollongong.

According to the monthly NAB Online Retail Sales Index, Australians spent $51.11 billion on online retail in the year to December, equal to around 13 per cent of total retail trade.

Prime memberships, which include services such as free delivery, video, music and books, increased the company’s subscription revenue to $346.2 million in 2023, up from $246.21 million in 2022.

The company’s advertising business grew 50 per cent to $153.4 million. Amazon Prime Video will start running ads in Australia this year.

Cloud growth

Amazon’s retail growth is on par with its cloud computing arm AWS, which landed in Sydney in 2011 to cash in on companies shifting their IT operations from on-premise data centres to the cloud.

AWS’s Australian revenue increased 22 per cent to $3.33 billion in 2023 from $2.7 billion last year and $1.1 billion in 2021. The division reported an after-tax loss in 2022 of $86.3 million, down from $91.1 million the year before.

To maintain its dominant market position, ahead of Microsoft and Google, AWS is investing $13.2 billion in Australian data centres by 2027, in a scheme it claims will create 11,000 jobs in construction, facility maintenance, engineering and telecommunications.

Microsoft responded by committing $5 billion to building Australian data centres to bolster its local cybersecurity, cloud computing and artificial intelligence capabilities.

Figures from Gartner show AWS retained the number-one position in the Australian infrastructure-as-a-service market in 2022 with 31.9 per cent market share, followed by Microsoft (29.8 per cent), Google (19.7 per cent), IBM (4.5 per cent) and Alibaba (3.1 per cent).

Venture capital firm Blackbird Ventures is poised to sell a chunk of its early Canva shares to Sydney-based private equity firm Quadrant in a deal speculated to be worth more than $100 million.

The fund-to-fund transaction, which is yet to close, is separate to an ongoing $US1.5 billion ($2.26 billion) secondary share sale already under way at the design software giant, and includes shares held in some of Blackbird’s earliest funds.

Blackbird Ventures declined to comment when contacted by AFR Weekend on Friday, but it is understood the talks are in advanced stages, and will involve some of its Canva stake moving to Quadrant’s strategic equity fund.

Quadrant launched the fund last year in a departure from its usual growth and buyout-led funds, where the firm takes control of a portfolio investment.

The strategic equity fund takes minority positions, writing cheques typically between $20 million and $60 million.

Despite the large price tag, the tranches represent a relatively small portion of Blackbird’s total Canva holdings, and highlight the prized status of Canva equity.

Canva is targeting a US initial public offering, expected next year. Its ongoing share sale is expected to be finalised later this month, and is known to include buyers such as Goldman Sachs and the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan.

The secondary share sale is facilitated by existing investors and Canva staff members, breeding new millionaires among early employees of the company.

The secondary share sale values Canva at $US26 billion, which some existing investors have argued is a bargain.

It is not known if the Quadrant stake has been acquired at the same valuation.

Australian start-up darling Canva is facing arguably the greatest challenge of its decade-long existence, as is the local technology sector that has allowed it to thrive.

One of Canva’s most senior leaders, chief financial officer Damien Singh, quietly departed the design software company this month amid an internal investigation into allegations of inappropriate behaviour.

The current mood among many of its 4000 or so employees is one of angst and frustration, as what began as an internal company matter has exploded into public view.

Executive turnover ahead of an IPO is relatively common, as young start-ups look to bolster their leadership credentials. But messages posted to an anonymous professional community suggest there had been complaints of inappropriate behaviour made against Singh, who had been with Canva since 2016.

A source closed to Canva said Singh’s transition out of the company was already well underway before the online posts came to the attention of executives, and when notified of an investigation he resigned immediately.

“Damien has played an instrumental role in our journey and we appreciate the foundations he’s built to achieve the success we’ve had to date,” a spokesman said in a statement to reporters when news of Singh’s departure first broke. “As we now move into the next chapter, we mutually agreed that now is the right time to bring in a CFO with a long track record of growing public companies at global scale.”

In his own letter to staff, Singh mentioned nothing of the allegations, instead saying leading the finance team had been a “huge professional highlight and an honour.”

The events highlight not only the issues around the alleged behaviour but also transparency, which has been lacking, both to employees and to journalists covering the story.

The real facts of the matter - that Singh resigned earlier than planned after the allegations surfaced, and as the company began an internal investigation - took days to come out, and only after questions were asked by The Australian Financial Review and others who cannot be named for legal reasons.

This masthead is not suggesting that Singh is guilty, just that allegations have been made. Singh was contacted for comment but did not reply.

“Creating a safe environment for everyone is our number one priority,” a Canva spokesman said. “We have a zero-tolerance policy for inappropriate behaviour and we’re fully committed to thoroughly investigating and actioning any instances of this.”

What happens next represents a critical moment for Canva and for the Australian technology sector at large.

The company is currently worth about the same as Telstra, with a valuation of around $39 billion. Its success or otherwise will help shape the fortunes of Australia’s technology sector, as Atlassian had before it. The company has indicated that it will likely list on the Nasdaq in the US, which would cement its position as a Sydney-born global technology heavyweight.

To date, Canva had managed to successfully straddle the line between scrappy and serious.

“We’ve always been scrappy,” co-founder Melanie Perkins told me last year. That’s been a large part of the company’s charm and what has allowed it to innovate and grow so quickly.

But the company will no doubt be keen to appoint a CFO with the experience - and the temperament - to steer its next steps as it looks to woo investors, particularly in the US.

A source close to Canva who is not authorised to speak publicly said the company is already casting the net widely for Singh’s successor, and may consider a CFO based in the US.

The matter also represents a pivotal moment for Australia’s start-up sector more broadly. This is a sector that for a long time now has had to grapple with the uncomfortable truth that despite all of its lustre - and growing economic heft - issues such as inappropriate behaviour are still rife.

For a sector that often demands better of the media, members of Australia’s start-up scene need to be far more transparent - whether they’re dealing with journalists or their own employees - if they’re to be taken as seriously as their economic importance demands. New initiatives like Grapevine - a platform for members of the sector to anonymously share their stories - are a welcome step.

Greater transparency will lead to accountability, and a safer and stronger start-up sector. Start-ups like Canva are known for being fun and exciting places to work, but this month’s events have revealed the ugly truth that they aren’t immune to some of the worst aspects of corporate culture. The sector’s diversity numbers are still appalling and won’t improve until the culture improves.

Many women have either left the technology start-up sector or avoided it altogether due to issues around inappropriate behaviour, and the sector is poorer for it.

For Canva, how its co-founders handle the current fallout, as well as who they select as Singh’s successor, will serve as a litmus test if the company is ready to be treated as the mature, grown-up tech company that it aspires to be.

Sydney tech firm Lakeba is automating document verification across some of Australia’s biggest financial institutions, slashing processing times from about 12 minutes to within seconds, and will soon be deployed across multi-billion dollar transactions.

Lakeba’s DoxAI has developed and deployed its AI tools onto Microsoft’s Cloud to accelerate digitisation at ANZ, Macquarie Bank and now Perpetual.

Perpetual Corporate Trust chief executive Richard McCarthy said the 137-year-old firm was using AI to run quality checks on securitised loans and mortgages and planned to later extend its application to payments, which involves billions of dollars of transactions a day.

“There’s still a large paper based business and process in the banking and financial services industry of which we are an intermediary for and as a business, we’re always focused through what we call our ‘three E’s to C strategy’ – how do we make our business, our clients and the market more effective, more efficient, more economical, while improving and ensuring that we focus on the ever increasing risk of cybersecurity,” Mr McCarthy said.

“We have a technology which enables our clients to repeatable and scalable solutions that ensure our loan security documents are complete, accurate and ultimately enforceable. And we are really starting to create immense amounts of process improvement, accuracy and time benefit.”

Mr McCarthy said Perpetual planned to extend the technology’s use to payments in the second quarter. “That’s been a long time coming because … we’ve got seven legacy systems being replaced by a cloud SaaS (software as a service) solution, which processes hundreds of billions of dollars of payments – thousands of transactions a day. So it has to be 100 per cent accurate”.

Financial services have been one of the earliest and biggest adopters of AI. And while Australian Securities & Investments Commission chair Joe Longo said there was “plenty of scope for making the best use of our regulatory toolkit” to regulate AI, it did not mean more needed to be done to rein in the technology.

“Even as AI ‘leaps forward,’ at a rate never seen before, questions around transparency and explainability become paramount if we’re to protect consumers from harm – intended or not,” Mr Long said.

“It isn’t fanciful to imagine that credit providers using AI systems to identify ‘better’ credit risks could (potentially) unfairly discriminate against those vulnerable consumers. And with ‘opaque’ AI systems, the mechanisms by which that discrimination occurs could be difficult to detect. Even if the current laws are sufficient to punish bad action, their ability to prevent the harm might not be.”

But Mr McCarthy said Perpetual’s use of AI was strictly about verifying documentation, a process which typically takes a human around 12 minutes to do. The AI has slashed this process to about 48 seconds, Mr McCarthy said.

“Our process is really around process improvements rather than credit quality, of which the banks are basically providing that loan to an individual, determining that loan is fit for purpose and that loan can be serviced by them within their credit parameters.

“We’re one step down in terms of actually really trying to ensure once that loan is taken out, by the bank off or non bank financial institution, that it is 100 per cent accurate.

“What happens sometimes, you know, you have a land title registry, the certificate of title, the mortgage document, there’ll be a spelling error in one of those documents, and therefore the name is wrong, and really the entire loan contract needs to be accurate, verified and then enforceable. That’s where these improvements are coming from.”

Lakeba chief executive Giuseppe Porcelli also said AI’s use in document verification meant it wasn’t making decisions in which any bias could be an issue. Rather, he said, it was ensuring documentation was more correct, achieving about 97 per cent accuracy.

“I will use an Italian expression – it depends on how many drinks or how good the lifestyle of the human had the day before? Because you know, humans sometimes are subjective to something else in their life. The person can be distracted for any reason,” Mr Porcelli said.

“So the accuracy, in my words, can be really competitive when it comes to human versus the ability of a machine to discover issues in a digital or physical document.

“We firstly create products by making sure that we deeply understand what the challenges are, especially when it comes to workflows and process compliance.”

Seattle | Microsoft said it would eliminate 1900 roles in its video game division, including at Activision Blizzard, which it acquired for $US69 billion ($105 billion) three months ago.

The job cuts will be made at Activision Blizzard, the maker of hit games such as Call of Duty and Guitar Hero, as well as at Xbox, according to a staff memo from Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft Gaming, that was obtained by The New York Times.

The cuts amount to a reduction of nearly 9 per cent of Microsoft’s 22,000-person video game division, but less than 1 per cent of the company’s roughly 220,000 employees overall.

“Looking ahead, we’ll continue to invest in areas that will grow our business and support our strategy of bringing more games to more players around the world,” Mr Spencer said in the memo.

This month, thousands of employees across the video game industry have been told they are facing layoffs, as the pandemic boom in playing continues to recede.

Riot Games, which makes League of Legends, said it would lay off about 11 per cent of its workforce. Twitch, a video streaming platform owned by Amazon that is used heavily by gamers, announced that it would cut 35 per cent of its staff. Discord, a social platform beloved by gamers, is cutting 18 per cent of its ranks. And Unity Software, which provides software for game developers, said it was cutting one-quarter of its staff, or roughly 1800 jobs. They all had layoffs last year as well.

‘Unprecedented’ turn

Piers Harding-Rolls, a gaming researcher at the analytics firm Ampere Analysis, said some trims at Activision Blizzard were expected after the acquisition, but the extent of the industry cuts was “unprecedented.”

“I’ve been really surprised by the scale and extent in terms of the number of companies that have laid people off in the new year,” he said. “It seems like a lot of companies waited for the end of the year and pulled the trigger in January.”

At Microsoft, gaming has become the company’s most important consumer business, surpassing $US15 billion in annual sales, largely under the Xbox brand. The company’s ambitions became clear two years ago, when it announced the blockbuster deal to acquire Activision Blizzard, whose valuation had fallen over concerns about its workplace culture, which the company denied.

The deal faced intense regulatory scrutiny around the world, and the company had to delay the closing date to October, from August.

In the meantime, as the world reopened after the pandemic retreated, consumers started going out again instead of staying in and playing. Microsoft’s gaming revenue fell $US764 million, or 5 per cent, in its last fiscal year, which ended June 30.

Bobby Kotick, who led Activision Blizzard since 2008 and built it into a powerhouse, left the company at the end of last year. The president of Blizzard Entertainment, Mike Ybarra, announced on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, that Thursday would be his last day at the company.

“Having already spent 20+ years at Microsoft and with the acquisition of Activision Blizzard behind us, it’s time for me to (once again) become Blizzard’s biggest fan from the outside,” Mr Ybarra wrote.

The layoffs were reported earlier by The Verge. Microsoft declined to comment.

The video game industry is “suffering through a winter right now”, said Joost van Dreunen, a New York University professor who studies the gaming business.

This year is expected to be slower for the industry than 2023, which had a series of blockbuster releases including The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and a remake of Resident Evil 4.

In the meantime, companies are shedding workers and cutting costs to stay competitive. “If everybody around you is cutting their overhead and you don’t, you’re going to invoke the wrath of your shareholders at some point,” Mr van Dreunen said.

An expected wave of merger and acquisition activity in Australia’s technology scene is picking up momentum with the closure of two deals in the fintech sector, for a tax software firm and an online mortgage broker.

Queensland-based Mortgage Mart of Australia, a mortgage manager with a loan portfolio exceeding $1 billion, has been snapped up by fellow Queensland digital lender WLTH in a deal worth more than $10 million, while Melbourne accounting software app maker TaxLeopard has bought rival Airtax for $500,000. 

The Australian Financial Review called the start of a tech M&A wave earlier this month, due to a divide opening up between well-funded tech firms and those that have less prospect of raising affordable capital to continue growing in a higher interest rate environment. 

WLTH has cash on hand to make its first acquisition after closing a $14 million funding round led by Melbourne-based investment firm Rajomon and Kina Bank, an ASX-listed digital bank from Papua New Guinea.

After completing the deal WLTH will have a loan book exceeding $1.5 billion, with co-founder and chief executive Brodie Haupt saying it would keep the brands separate. 

Mr Haupt said one of Mortgage Mart’s founders, Wayne Armstrong, would stay in an operational role as its general manager, while his co-founder Doug Daniel would take a board seat. The exact terms of the acquisition were kept private, but it was worth more than $10 million, with a mixture of cash and equity.

“This is our first successful acquisition, following one previous unsuccessful deal – which, in hindsight, was a positive outcome. Based on those learnings, we were better able to make the right decisions that enabled us to close this deal,” Mr Haupt said.

“From the outset, our measure of value was that Mortgage Mart had built a solid loan book, loyal customer base and trustworthy brand.

“While market conditions did influence our negotiations to a degree, the intrinsic value of the company remained stable, and that was reflected in the final deal value.”

Mr Haupt said WLTH would be able to add new products and application processes to Mortgage Mart’s platform, meaning loan applications could be dealt with in less than 15 minutes.

He said WLTH had no immediate plans for further acquisitions, but was open to opportunities.

Footwear brand Skechers saw record sales of US$2.02 billion in the third quarter of FY23, up 7.8 per cent year on year.

The company said sales grew in all its regions, including the Americas, which it attributed to the strength of its direct-to-consumer channel.

Net earnings surged 69.3 per cent to $145.4 million while gross margin rose to 52.9 per cent.

“Our record third-quarter sales were the result of our continued innovation and determination to deliver comfort, style and quality in every pair,” said Robert Greenberg, CEO.

During the quarter, Skechers launched a collaboration with Snoop Dogg and another with Harry Kane.

“Designing desirable footwear for fans of Snoop Dogg as well as our ambassador Martha Stewart demonstrates the diversity of style, offering and demographic of the Skechers brand and our customers,” said Greenberg.

“We believe our constant innovation to meet the needs of consumers from all walks of life—including professional athletes, and our impactful marketing will drive our success for years to come.”