Ann: SSG - H1 FY23 Results Presentation, page-40

As an overseas investor, I am quite concerned of the consumer experience, the customer review online are mostly negative (genuine or not) and I'm unable to gain in-store experience, can someone enlighten me further from customer perspective?

I've had cause to do business in one of their stores and found the experience to be a very positive one.
I've owned them previously and sold out some time ago but just because their SP got a little above a sensible value (somewhere about S1.25).

They have a very solid business model with lots of things to like so I follow them closely.
They manage to achieve a Net Profit ratio (Net profit to Revenue) of about 7% in most years.
This number compares with MHJ and AX1 who both achieve around 7% NPR.
The difference is that Michael Hill achieves a Gross Profit margin of about 65%, The Accent Group achieves around 55% while SSG achieves around 40%.

SSG products are, mainly, exclusive and are often small in stature and more expensive than their size would suggest which is, in part at least, why their overheads, through wages and lease costs, are lower enabling them to achieve similar NPR's to MHJ and AX1 even though their GP margins are less to start with.

They've grown from about 108 stores in 2017 to 121 stores now so, although their store rollout isn't staggering in terms of speed, they've achieved what they have without any external debt requirements even though they've managed to pay out dividend which, in the non-covid years, represents 75% to 80% of the earnings per share.
Their average revenue per store has improved substantially across the last several years so the revenue increases have not simply been due to store rollouts. I think they've introduced more "female" products over time so that they've gradually changed from being primarily a mens store.

The biggest concern at the moment lies with the reference in their recent report to "trading in November and December being a bit softer than we expected".
The same report referred to sales for January and the first half of February being down on the same time last year by about 2%.
They offer discretionary products in times which may become a bit tougher over the next six months so I continue to watch.