A £22m blaze, but Asos has risen from the ashes before

South Yorkshire Police are treating the case as arson. Asos said in a statement to the London Stock Exchange that it was cooperating fully with the investigation, and that it was fully insured for the loss of stock and the interruption to its business.

Four floors of the 650,000 sq ft warehouse were affected by the conflagration, though the technology and structure of the building remained unscathed.

Analysts feared that “short sellers” – investors betting against the performance of the business – would try to use the incident to make a profit. However, Asos’ shares held relatively steady. They slipped more than 3pc in morning trading but closed up 2.3pc at £28.15.

The fire came at a difficult time for Asos. Shares in the retailer have halved since the start of the year, falling as much as 40pc in a single day at the start of June, when Asos warned that its business in the US and Australia were experiencing a dramatic slowdown. The company’s international business rocketed 48pc in the three months to June 2013, as shoppers around the world snapped up its inexpensive, trend-driven garments. It grew just 17pc in the three months to June this year, as the strengthening pound made those clothes and accessories relatively expensive.

A lot of Asos’ overheads are in the UK, where the business was founded and is headquartered. Around 70pc of all its stock is held at the Barnsley warehouse, which dispatches orders around to the world to every country Asos operates in other than China.

It also has a warehouse in China, and is building a new distribution hub in Germany. It has two, much smaller returns units in Australia and America, which handle items that customers have ordered and rejected.

Asos has traditionally argued that it is an advantage to have the single Barnsley hub processing so many of its orders. On Monday, the company declined to comment on why it had not spread the risk by building its European hub sooner.

more