Biography
Christiaan Ashworth & John Douglas Parker are the founders of End Clothing, one of the earliest pioneers in meshing high-end luxury with streetwear. Its model, combining online and high-street retail selling contemporary menswear and sportswear, has ranked it highly in the streetwear league. Its London, Newcastle and Glasgow locations regularly attract long lines of eager streetwear fans looking to buy the latest exclusive drops in a weekly rotation. End stocks over 400 brands, shipping around 6,000 products globally per day.
In 2005, friends Ashworth and Parker invested £20,000 each to set up a menswear shop in Newcastle after graduating from university. Seeing the internet’s potential for driving online sales early on, the co-founders launched the corresponding e-commerce website in 2006. By 2009, End was formed, and a second Newcastle branch was opened. In 2014, Index Ventures bought a minority stake for an undisclosed sum and two years later, the duo opened a Glasgow store.
Ashworth and Parker tapped London’s most notable destination for streetwear, opening a flagship store in Soho in late 2018. Spanning three floors, the 9,500-square-foot streetwear temple opened with a “sneaker wall” and iPads for consumers to engage with End’s online offering. The company’s turnover in 2018 was £100 million, and is projected to reach £350 million by 2020. In 2019, End clothing was ranked 49th place on the Sunday Times Profit Track 100 league table, and 68th on the Sunday Times International Track 200, noted for its stark upward sales trajectory and rapid growth in the last three years. In 2021, global investment firm The Carlyle Group agreed to acquire a majority stake in the End. Ashworth and Parker remain significant minority stake holders and remained co-CEOs during the acquisition.