ASOS co-founder Quentin Griffiths dies in Thailand after balcony fall

Quentin Griffiths, who co-founded British fast-fashion retailer ASOS, has died after a fall from a balcony in Thailand, police said on Friday.

Police told Reuters that Griffiths, 58, had fallen from the 17th floor of an apartment block in the seaside resort city of Pattaya on February 9.

Initial investigations have ruled out foul play, police said, adding that CCTV showed no sign of anybody entering his apartment, where he had lived alone.

His body has been sent for autopsy.

The police also quoted a Thai friend of Griffiths as saying the Briton had been worried about lawsuits from his former wife, a Thai national.

Documents related to those lawsuits were found in his apartment, the police said.

ASOS FOUNDED IN 2000

The case did not initially attract media attention in Pattaya, which has a large contingent of foreign residents, until The Sun newspaper in Britain reported it on Thursday.

Griffiths co-founded ASOS, then known as 'As Seen on Screen' with Nick Robertson, a former advertising executive and great-grandson of tailor Austin Reed, in 2000, and floated it on London's Alternative Investment Market in 2001.

The company defied the wave of failures that hit other web-based companies after the Internet bubble burst and emerged as a standout success in the British retail scene.

ASOS expanded rapidly into new countries, broadening its offer of both own-brand and third-party products, and moved quickly to capitalise on the rise of social media.

Griffiths was marketing director at ASOS before he left the firm in 2004. He remained a large shareholder in ASOS for nearly another decade.

Shares of the company, whose own-label creations have been worn by the likes of Michelle Obama and Catherine, Princess of Wales, have slid around 96 per cent from their peak value.