Where do fashion-obsessed consumers shop to find deep cuts from brands like Vaquera, Luar, Chopova Lowena and Sandy Liang? For many, the answer is Ssense. But now the company is restructuring, there are questions about what it means for indie brands.
Last week, the Superior Court of Quebec granted Ssense with creditor protection, meaning it can maintain its operations while restructuring the business, similar to Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US. Ssense will now solicit a wide variety of options, including investment and refinancing offers. The founders have expressed the intention of submitting a bid as part of this process.
The retailer now has a chance to stabilise while maintaining operations with the executive leadership team intact. The company has $371 million in debt, according to the filing.
On the one hand, it’s good news for Ssense: the deal offers breathing room for the retailer to stabilise on its own terms. On the other hand, it brings up concerns about how the retailer’s support for indie brands might be impacted as the business grapples with $371 million in debt and faces the decision of whether or not it will find a buyer. There’s no guarantee that a new owner will save Ssense: in December 2023, Frasers Group acquired Matches, but it entered administration by March 2024.
With Ssense’s future, the fate of independent and emerging designers hangs in the balance as options for experimental retail at scale dry up. Losing Ssense would diminish the little infrastructure the industry has for supporting these designers, and providing them with a pathway for visibility and growth. Even if Ssense comes out the other side, its business model — which took big bets on young brands with significant inventory buys — could look different to before. As department stores invest more in what they know will sell, and other multi-brand platforms collapse or consolidate, young designers are at risk of missing out on a crucial sales channel, as well as a platform that helps them learn how to scale, test collections in front of a global audience, and gain access to cash flow to support their early stages.
At its best, Ssense was able to take a chance on more fashion-forward and trendy items, while other retailers may have supported indie talent by buying safer commercial pieces. It was also one of the few retailers (along with Dover Street Market) that catered to an audience looking for that aesthetic. Each Ssense buyer owned a niche, be it streetwear or Scandi contemporary brands, which allowed for a specific brand curation. Along with that, Ssense would actually increase the buy over time, allowing brands to grow with the platform, and would pay on time with an upfront deposit to shoulder the production costs for fledgling labels.
“If Ssense believed in a brand they would buy heavily into it, so they would really represent the collection widely, which made it easier to tell a story as an emerging designer, while being displayed with some of the world’s leading designers,” says PR and branding consultant Jeppe Grosmann. “Ssense was one of the few that was really open to working on different terms with emerging designers and had the understanding about being reliable.”
Ssense would also support new brands (including Marine Serre and Ottolinger in their early stages) with its savvy social-first marketing and content strategy, educating customers on brands or categories they may otherwise not know about. Ssense also worked with designers to help them merchandise their collections and understand how to price their pieces. The retailer even aided emerging talent to navigate logistics and accounts, guiding them through the wholesale process, which was often unfamiliar to them.
For this level of support to return, a new buyer would need to uphold Ssense’s values and unique point of view when it comes to uplifting emerging and indie talent. “When individuals who are not merchandisers or retailers take over a company without interest in protecting and developing the ‘brand’, they rarely succeed,” says Gary Wassner, CEO of Hilldun Corporation, which provides financial services to fashion brands and receives payments from Ssense on behalf of those he works with. “It’s hard to be a successful investor if you don’t understand the fundamentals of the industry.”
How brands are responding
Already shaken by the Matches collapse, many brands are proactively consulting lawyers to understand how to safeguard themselves if the restructuring goes awry.
Given how unstable the multi-brand channel has been, experts note that diversification is essential. “We don’t view Ssense alone as a risk, rather, we’ve been anticipating a broader shift in the industry for quite some time. The real challenge for young brands is when too much of their revenue depends on a single wholesale partner. That’s always risky,” says Jennie Rosén, CEO of the Swedish Fashion Council, which incubates emerging talent.
One retail alternative to Ssense is Dover Street Market, though there are also countless smaller boutiques that focus on indie designers: Café Forgot in New York, Machine-A in London and British online marketplace APOC Store, to name a few. “There are these little boutiques that are so niche but have cult followings. Once you get on those platforms, people will recognise you and you can start to build your social media following and email list,” says Hillary Taymour, founder and creative director of New York-based brand Collina Strada. Still, none of them can replace the volume that Ssense represents, which leaves a gap that many young designers fear will be difficult to fill.
For brands, the bigger question is how Ssense might evolve. Will it continue betting on niche, emerging talent, or will restructuring push the company to prioritise bigger, more commercial labels with faster turnover? Ownership uncertainty adds another layer of tension, and speculation about possible acquirers is rife. The Saks-Neiman Marcus merger and the consolidation between YNAP and Mythersea underscore how aggressively the luxury e-commerce sector is reshaping.
“A good fit would be Amazon Fashion given its appetite for luxury though this risks losing some of the brands that would prefer to avoid selling on Amazon,” says Marie Driscoll, adjunct professor at The New School and principal advisor of Rethink Retail, on potential buyers. “Nordstrom [which last year went private] is one of the friendlier shops for new brands, but it doesn’t need to acquire or invest in Ssense to have access to the brands. Given that it exited Canada just two years ago, [Nordstrom] is not likely to want to return this quickly,” Driscoll continues, adding that most private equity investors would stay away from such a niche retail concept.
One advantage for Ssense is that this is not a fire sale; with court approval now secured, the company has breathing room to explore aligned options. In the meantime, designers are finding creative ways to shore up their businesses. “My advice to other brands who are struggling at this time is, be honest with your customers,” adds Taymour.
She says brands could post on social media asking customers to support their e-commerce site directly, sign up for newsletters and build that into a marketing list. Taymour used this strategy herself in 2020 when Covid hit and she was suddenly saddled with unsold inventory, which ultimately led to growing her nascent direct-to-consumer (DTC) channel.
British designer Charles Jeffrey has taken a similar approach, recently sharing his perspective on Substack. “Ssense has been a lifeline for so many, and the fallout from this feels like Matches 2.0. My advice to young creatives: diversify your cash flow early. Don’t rely on one revenue stream,” he wrote. “Explore custom pieces, wholesale, collaborations with stylists and high-end clients, teaching, creating artworks or illustrations, consulting, print design, whatever skills you have, turn them into opportunities.”
Jeffrey has also been experimenting with ways to funnel momentum into DTC engagement with customers. He wrote on Substack: “We’re leaning more into other areas that the business can germinate from fashion… music, beauty, events, installations. We’re building not just a brand, but a cultural space. The recent event with Allie X and Selfridges, where we shared references and creative direction insights, was a great example of how all those worlds collided.”
That sense of community has become a central survival tool. “Platforms like TikTok and Substack give designers direct routes to customers,” says Jessica Ramírez, managing director of The Consumer Collective. She points out that this shift also contributed to the decline of Ssense’s curation-first model: “There’s so much information and points of view that the retailer doesn’t count as much.” Collaboration, she adds, is proving just as powerful a driver of visibility and sales, whether through blockbuster hits like the Adidas Wales Bonner Sambas, or more left-field partnerships such as Chopova Lowena’s tie-up with Hellmann’s mayonnaise.
Unexpected wholesale channels are also emerging. “Anthropologie is killing it right now. They’re open to new designers, and it’s not an obvious choice, but it’s a great opportunity,” continues Ramírez on the global lifestyle store, which has begun stocking brands like Damson Madder, Bardot and Le Creuset. “In the US, Dick’s Sporting Goods is another surprising wholesale channel. They’ve even done exclusives with Nike, and brands like Supergoop and Away are selling there.”
Industry bodies may also have a role to play in cushioning the blow. As the Spring/Summer 2026 season continues, fashion councils could implement more commercially driven initiatives that benefit designers — particularly given how much visibility consumers already have over fashion week despite lacking opportunities to join in. In February, the British Fashion Council opened the London Fashion Week Shop, a boutique stocking some of the city’s most exciting indie and emerging designers. There’s an opportunity to build on that promising first step, scaling it up with a launch party featuring celebrities and influencers, and turning it into a buzzy community event.
Despite the fallout, experts are hopeful about the future. “There has to be a definite realignment of relationship between the brand and the retailer,” says Wassner. “I do believe that retail is going to figure this out and be the survivor here.”
This article has been updated to confirm that Ssense is soliciting a variety of options, including investment and refinancing offers. (24/9/25)
With reporting by Hilary Milnes.
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