Employee turnover is a persistent and costly problem for labour-intensive retail organisations, and the fashion and lifestyle segment of Malaysian retail has been particularly exposed to it. This study examines the influence of five motivational factors, financial rewards, job characteristics, career development, management support and recognition, on employee retention at Brook Corporation, a Malaysian fashion and leather goods group whose reported turnover rate rose by approximately two percentage points in 2019. Anchored in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Herzberg’s two-factor theory, the study adopted a positivist philosophy, a deductive approach and a descriptive cross-sectional design. Primary quantitative data were collected through a structured five-point Likert-scale questionnaire administered to 135 employees selected by convenience sampling, and analysed in SPSS using descriptive statistics, Cronbach’s alpha reliability testing, Pearson correlation and multiple linear regression. All five motivational factors correlated positively and significantly with employee retention (r = .376 to .481, p < .01). However, only three constructs — financial rewards, job characteristics and career development — met the minimum internal-consistency threshold and were retained in the regression model, which explained 27.2 per cent of the variance in retention (adjusted R² = .272; F = 17.652, p < .001). Financial rewards (β = .257, p = .001) and career development (β = .351, p < .001) emerged as significant predictors, whereas job characteristics did not (β = .069, p = .477). The findings suggest that in this setting a hygiene factor and a motivator operate jointly: competitive and transparent monetary rewards prevent dissatisfaction, while structured growth pathways generate the intrinsic attachment that keeps employees in place. The paper offers a practical retention agenda for fashion-retail employers and identifies measurement refinement of management support and recognition as a priority for future research.