It has appointed Growth Society to supports its next phase of e-commerce growth

Iconic jean maker Hiut Demin Co is embarking on a new growth strategy after its founders sold the business last year.

The Cardigan based venture, which was established by husband and wife team David and Clare Hieatt, was acquired by German family-owned investment group EAAVL.

The new owners have now appointed Leeds-based Growth Society to support its next phase of ecommerce growth, bringing together senior strategic and channel expertise to scale the brand.

Johann von Loeper has been appointed chief executive of Hiut Denim to lead the business forward.

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Growth Society is supporting Hiut Denim on building a structured, commercially aligned growth model spanning acquisition, measurement and forecasting, growing the brand’s existing loyal customer base.

The engagement is led by a curated team of senior specialists with experience across premium e-commerce and fashion.

Strategist Matt Roffe brings 17 years’ experience across e-commerce and premium consumer brands, including the retail and fashion portfolio at THG Ingenuity.

Founded in 2011, Hiut Denim was born from a mission to bring jean-making back to Cardigan after the Dewhirst factory closed in 2002, ending 40 years of denim manufacturing in the town. The brand quickly established a global reputation for craftsmanship and sustainability, and has become one of the most respected independent denim labels in the world.

EAAVL, a German family investment group, initially became a minority shareholder in Hiut Denim in late 2024 before assuming full ownership of the business. The new owners have committed to maintaining Hiut’s base in Cardigan

Mr von Loepe said: “We’re excited to be partnering with Growth Society as we take Hiut Denim into a new era. What stood out immediately was their ability to combine strategic thinking, a focus on profitability and senior expertise. The model feels neatly aligned to where Hiut is today and where we want to go.”

Will Anderson, founder at Growth Society, said: “I’ve admired Hiut for a long time. It’s an enviable brand with a great product and a genuine purpose behind it. Visiting Johann and the team in Cardigan earlier this month only reinforced that. Our role now is to help align strategy, execution and performance in a way that supports sustainable long-term growth.”

Hiut Denim Co was founded in 2012 by the Hieatts to bring jean-making back to a town that had produced 35,000 pairs a week for 40 years before its factory closed in 2002.

Built on the philosophy of doing one thing well, Hiut makes premium jeans handcrafted by a team of specialist makers with over 10,000 hours of experience) using Japanese selvedge denim sourced from the Kuroki mill.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was met with boos during a University of Arizona commencement speech after discussing artificial intelligence and fears the technology could reshape – or replace – parts of the workforce.

Schmidt, who led Google from 2001 to 2011, addressed graduates on Friday while reflecting on how technology transformed society during his career. The atmosphere shifted, however, when he pivoted to artificial intelligence – a topic that has increasingly fueled concerns about job displacement among younger workers entering the labor market.

“The same tools that connect us also isolate us. The same platforms that gave everyone a voice… degraded the public square,” Schmidt told graduates.

Boos from the crowd intensified after Schmidt compared artificial intelligence to previous technological revolutions.

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Eric Schmidt served as Google’s CEO from 2001 to 2011. (Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“I know what many of you are feeling about that. I can hear you,” Schmidt said, appearing to address the boos. “There is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics are fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create.”

Schmidt acknowledged those fears as “rational” but argued graduates should help shape the future of AI rather than reject it.

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“The question is not whether AI will shape the world. It will,” Schmidt said. “The question is whether you will have shaped artificial intelligence.”

The exchange underscored growing anxiety surrounding artificial intelligence as major corporations rapidly deploy AI tools across industries. Companies including IBM and Klarna have publicly discussed using AI to streamline operations and reduce certain staffing needs, particularly in administrative and entry-level roles.

Boos from the crowd intensified after Schmidt compared artificial intelligence to previous technological revolutions. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

A recent Pew Research Center survey found many Americans remain more concerned than excited about AI’s expanding role in daily life and the economy.

Schmidt’s appearance also drew criticism from some student activist groups over sexual assault allegations raised in a lawsuit filed last year by former partner Michelle Ritter. Schmidt has denied the allegations, which an attorney previously described as fabricated. Earlier this year, a judge ordered the dispute into arbitration.

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The University of Arizona defended its decision to invite Schmidt as commencement speaker, citing his contributions to technology and scientific research.

“He helped lead Google’s rise into one of the world’s most influential technology companies and continues to advance research and discovery through major philanthropic and scientific initiatives,” university spokesperson Mitch Zak said in a statement.

The University of Arizona defended its decision to invite Schmidt as commencement speaker. (Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

A similar incident occurred earlier this month when real estate executive Gloria Caulfield was met with boos after linking AI to “the next Industrial Revolution” during a commencement address at the University of Central Florida.

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Despite the backlash, Schmidt urged graduates to embrace open debate and innovation, arguing technological change remains inevitable.

“The future is not yet finished,” Schmidt said in his closing remarks. “It is now your turn to shape it.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday announced another location for one of the city’s five planned government-run grocery stores.

The store will be located in the Bronx at what Mamdani called The Peninsula, a planned mixed-use campus that will also offer affordable housing and a health and wellness center in the Hunts Point neighborhood. It is scheduled to open some time in 2027.

“This store will be the first of the five city-run grocery stores to open,” Mamdani told reporters during a press conference. “Bronx residents will be able to begin shopping here next year.”

“It is going to be a 20,000 square-foot location, and its ambition is perfectly placed at The Peninsula, which will house 740 units of 100% affordable housing by the time that it’s fully built,” the mayor continued.

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Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York, speaks during a news conference presenting the fiscal year 2027 executive budget at City Hall in New York, on Tuesday, May 12, 2026. (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)

The Peninsula will be located on the site of the former Spofford Juvenile Detention Facility.

Mamdani previously announced an East Harlem location for the city’s flagship 9,000 square-foot Manhattan location, but that store will be built from the ground up and is slated to open in 2029.

The East Harlem site is estimated to cost $30 million, according to the New York Times. It was unclear how much the location at The Peninsula would cost.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks at a press conference at Deno’s Wonder Wheel on Coney Island in the New York City Borough of Brooklyn, New York City, on Feb. 15, 2026. ( Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty Images / Getty Images)

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The total budget allocated for the development of the five city-run grocery stores is $70 million. 

Mamdani has touted the city-run grocery store plan as a “grand experiment” that would reduce the cost of everyday items like bread and eggs.

He has previously promised to open one such store in each borough, saying the city will subsidize basic grocery items while a private operator runs the stores under city rules requiring lower prices.

Mamdani has previously promised to open one such store in each borough, vowing to reduce the prices of items like bread and eggs. (iStock / iStock)

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Mamdani has said the city-run stores would be part of a broader “ecosystem” and would not replace existing grocers, including bodegas and neighborhood supermarkets, amid questions about their impact on small businesses.

Fox News Digital’s Michael Dorgan contributed to this report.

Lloyds Banking Group is preparing to scrap the Halifax brand after 173 years on the high street, in what would amount to one of the most significant rebrands in British banking history.

The FTSE 100 lender, which also owns Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland and pensions and investment business Scottish Widows, is reported to be drawing up plans to wind down Halifax as a standalone consumer-facing brand, with existing customers gradually migrated across to Lloyds Bank. According to The Sun, which first reported the story, new digital account applications through Halifax could be paused as early as July, with the brand expected to stop taking on new customers altogether by October.

A Lloyds Banking Group spokesperson said the company “regularly looks” at the role its brands play in supporting customers, but stressed there are “no changes for customers as of today” and that no final decision has been taken.

The end of a 173-year-old high-street name

If confirmed, the move would draw a line under a brand whose roots stretch back to 1853, when the Halifax Permanent Benefit Building and Investment Society was founded above a coffee house in the Yorkshire mill town that gave it its name. By 1913 it was the largest building society in the country, and its 1997 demutualisation, which turned 7.5 million members into shareholders, remains the biggest stock-market flotation of its kind in UK history.

Halifax merged with the Bank of Scotland in 2001 to form HBOS, before being absorbed into Lloyds Banking Group during the emergency rescue of the financial crisis in January 2009. It has since operated as a trading division of Bank of Scotland, sitting alongside Lloyds Bank within the same group while continuing to compete with it on the high street and online.

Why lloyds is consolidating

Industry analysts have long suspected that maintaining four overlapping consumer brands, Lloyds, Halifax, Bank of Scotland and Scottish Widows, would eventually become commercially unsustainable as more customers move to digital channels. With the differences between Lloyds and Halifax now largely cosmetic for many product lines, particularly mortgages and current accounts, consolidating onto a single retail brand would reduce marketing duplication, simplify technology spend and concentrate scale behind one black horse.

The shake-up also lands against a backdrop of accelerating physical retrenchment. The group has already confirmed plans for a fresh round of Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland branch closures running through 2026 and into 2027, affecting dozens of locations across the country.

More broadly, the House of Commons Library estimates that around 6,700 bank and building society branches have closed in the UK since January 2015 – roughly two-thirds of the network that existed a decade ago.

Lloyds is not alone in slimming down its brand portfolio. The recent decision to retire the TSB name from Britain’s high streets following Santander’s takeover of the lender underlines a broader pattern of UK banking consolidation in which long-standing high-street identities are being absorbed into larger corporate parents.

What it means for customers and SMEs

For existing Halifax customers, the group has indicated that any transition would be phased and that account numbers would remain unchanged. Customers who hold accounts with both Halifax and Lloyds will continue to benefit from separate Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) protection limits because of the way the group is structured, an important point for savers and small businesses with balances above the £85,000 single-bank threshold.

For SMEs in particular, the implications are more strategic than administrative. Halifax has historically been a significant mortgage lender to self-employed borrowers, contractors and owner-managers, often willing to underwrite cases on as little as one year of accounts, and a familiar route into homeownership for staff at small businesses. Folding the brand into Lloyds reduces the optical diversity of the UK lending market, even where the underlying balance sheet remains the same, and may concentrate decision-making in fewer hands.

Consumer group Which? has repeatedly warned that successive waves of branch closures and brand consolidation are narrowing choice for vulnerable customers and small firms, particularly in market towns where rival fascias are increasingly run from the same back office.

The Treasury’s Access to Banking Review, launched to assess the impact of branch withdrawals across the UK, is now expected to face fresh political pressure if one of the country’s most familiar high-street names is also removed from the skyline.

A defining moment for british banking

Quietly retiring Halifax would mark a defining moment in the long-running consolidation of UK retail banking, the point at which the post-2008 patchwork of legacy brands finally gives way to a smaller number of dominant digital-first names. Lloyds will be acutely aware of the sentimental power of a 173-year-old high-street fixture, and of the political sensitivity around access to face-to-face services.

For now, the group is keeping its options open. But for customers, small businesses and the wider market, the signal is unmistakable: the era in which Lloyds Banking Group ran two parallel retail high-street brands is drawing to a close.

Amy Ingham

Amy is a newly qualified journalist specialising in business journalism at Business Matters with responsibility for news content for what is now the UK’s largest print and online source of current business news.

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