A year in review--2011

By Direct Commerce | Publication date: 13/12/2011 | Category: News

 

This year has not been without its ups and downs. We kicked off 2011 covered in a blanket of snow and ice, we saw Argos launch a TV channel and Royal Mail deregulation move a step closer. We noticed more and more direct sellers heading overseas and picked up on a trend that private equity investments were hotting up in our sector. We noted the demise of Habitat and saw big names swallowed up by even bigger names: Play.com and Rakuten, Kiddicare and Morrisons, Lovefilm and Amazon…

With so much to cover, we’ve saved you the trouble of trawling through our archives to bring you 2011: a year in review. So sit back and enjoy our roundup of the biggest stories of this year.

January
• Snow woes hit retailers. Homeware and apparel retailer Next estimates that it lost £22 million of “full-price sales” due to the adverse weather in December. At N Brown Group, the company that operates Figleaves, Marisota, JD Williams, and Jacamo, December’s extreme weather conditions had a negative effect on customer confidence, increasing the worry that parcels would not be delivered on time. N Brown’s catalogue mailings and customer statement despatches are also delayed due to a mail backlog.

• VAT goes up to 20 percent.

• ELF Cosmetics, a US-based online seller of cosmetics whose USP is its low price points, receives investment from TSG Consumer Partners. The private equity firm takes a minority stake and terms of the deal are not disclosed.

• The Hut Group, owner of Lookfantastic and Mankind, buys collapsed beauty products etailer HQ Hair.

• A hacker brings the Lush website to its knees, compromising the security of sensitive customer information. The retailer later avoids a fine by the Information Commissioner’s Office, which finds lush to be in breach of the Data Protection Act during the period of the attack.

• Amazon.com finally confirms it is buying the remaining shares in online DVD and games rental business Lovefilm.

February
• Nursery products etailer Kiddicare is snapped up by supermarket chain Morrisons for £70 million.

• Components firm Premier Farnell sells TPC Wire & Cable to TPC Intermediate Holdings, Inc, a venture-capital vehicle backed by Pfingsten Partners, for $43 million (£26.6 million).

• Home shopping and education supplies business Findel plans to raise £85 million via a rights issue and placing in order to restructure its balance sheet.

• Vintage-inspired accessories retailer Ollie & Nic appoints administrators and is subsequently sold as a going concern to a consortium of investors.

• UK footwear etailer Rubbersole is acquired by France-based Spartoo.

• Nine former directors of collapsed hampers business Farepak face disqualification from acting as directors after the Insolvency Service lodged an application in the High Court on behalf of Business Secretary Vince Cable. If successful, the disqualifications could run for as long as 15 years.

March
• The Advertising Standards Authority’s remit extends to covers online advertising communications and its rules on misleading ads will now apply to marketing messages on businesses’ websites as well as promotions on social-networking sites.

• Argos announces it will launch a TV-shopping channel on Sky in the summer.

• The assets of EthicalSuperstore.com a seller of all things eco-friendly are acquired out of administration by Spark Response, a contact centre and fulfilment firm.

• Entertainment products marketer the Webb Group buys Book Club Associates (BCA) from German-based holding company Aurelius Group.

• Delivering the budget, Chancellor George Osborne says that from November, Low Value Consignment Relief (LVCR, the tax loophole that allows goods to be shipped from the Channel Islands VAT-free) will be reduced from £18 to £15. Later in the year, he announces plans to scrap it altogether, effective April 2012.

• Royal Mail cuts approximately 3,451 jobs as part of its ongoing rationalisation and modernisation plans.

• Glasses Direct, an online retailer of prescription spectacles, adds designer sunglasses to its range with the acquisition of Sunglasses Shop.

• Alexon and Scotts & Co enter a joint venture to launch a catalogue for the former’s Eastex, Dash and Alexon ranges.

April
• Pavers Shoes launches a TV shopping channel called PaversShoes.tv. Pavers expects the channel to increase total sales by 20 percent, adding some £10 million to its annual turnover.

• Wallace Sacks, which sells bed linen, soft furnishings and accessories, finds a new home with Diverse Investments Group, which also operates BodyJewelleryShop.com and FourEyez.com, a marketer of fashion and novelty contact lenses. The previous owners divested the Wallace Sacks brand to concentrate on Muubaa, the leather brand they launched in 2007.

• Sex-toy etailer Lovehoney buys the domain name of online lingerie seller BeCheeky out of liquidation.

• Hiho, a jeweller business specialising in silver, falls to administration, closing down all 14 stores. The directors acquire certain assets, such as the website, and form a new company.

• Marks & Spencer confirms is making a return to France after a 10-year hiatus with a programme of store openings and an online retail presence.

• Purekit, an online seller of footwear, acquires apparel etailer Extremepie for an undisclosed sum. In September, the assets of Purekit are acquired by outdoor apparel etailer Webtogs from the liquidators. Extremepie is now part of Internet Fusion, which also operates online retailers Surffusion and Bikefusion.

• TV-shopping business Ideal Shopping Direct is taken private by Inflexion for £78.3 million.

• Private equity firm 3i buys outdoor apparel retailer Go Outdoors for £28 million.

• International sales at apparel etailer Asos exceed UK sales for the first time.

• The government publishes amendments to the Postal Services Bill that clarify the regulatory regime and safeguard the universal service. It will enable private sector investment into Royal Mail, see the government take on the company’s historic pension deficit and transfer regulatory responsibility from Postcomm to Ofcom, the communications regulator. The Bill is agreed by parliament in July.

• The UK celebrates with an extra bank holiday as Kate Middleton, whose parents own mail order company Party Pieces, marries HRH Prince William. We celebrate with a look at our favourite Royal Wedding emails.

May
• Dublin-headquartered WeddingsOnline, an online community and supplier directory of wedding dresses, venues, photographers, bands and videos, takes a 25 percent stake in wedding-supplies website Confetti.

• New Look founder Tom Singh acquires minority stake in maternity and nursery cataloguer/retailer JoJo Maman Bébé through investment vehicle Magenta Partners.
• London-based luxury-accessories etailer Boticca raises £1.5 million financing backed by France-based ISAI.

• Cornwall-based apparel cataloguer Celtic Sheepskin sells a minority stake to private equity firm Piper.

• Luxury products group Labelux, which owns perfume maker Coty, has acquired footwear brand Jimmy Choo from TowerBrook Capital Partners.

• Entertainment products retailer HMV Group divests its bookstore chain Waterstone’s to a fund controlled by Russian billionaire Alexander Mamut for £53 million. 

June
• The Hut Group adds to its health and beauty roster with the acquisition of sports-nutrition company MyProtein.com.

• Mail order butcher Donald Russell secures a £5.2 million loan from Lloyds Bank Corporate.

• Small and midsized businesses breathe a sigh of relief: members of the European parliament (MEPs), the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection and the Council of the European Union quash proposals requiring traders to refund the return cost of goods priced at €40 or more from anywhere in the EU and drop plans to force retailers to sell into every EU country.

• London-based shoe retailer Kurt Geiger is acquired by New-York based Jones Group, a designer, marketer and wholesaler of apparel and accessories, for $350 million (£215 million).

• VF Corporation, the US-based apparel retailer and owner of The North Face, Vans and Eastpak brands, takes apparel brand Timberland in a deal is worth $2 billion.

• Home Retail Group, the parent company of Argos and Homebase, confirms it acquired the rights for the Habitat brand in the UK and Ireland as well as the UK Habitat website and three London stores for a total consideration of £24.5 million. The rest of Habitat’s 30 stores are shuttered, with the loss of hundreds of jobs.

• Seeds and plants cataloguer Thompson & Morgan suspends sales of sprouting varieties of white mustard, rocket and fenugreek over fears that the seeds were linked to an outbreak of E.Coli in France.

• Genesco Inc, the US-based retailer of sportswear, shoes and accessories, buys UK footwear retailer Schuh in a deal worth £125 million.

• Foot Shop Ltd, the company behind the Cosyfeet and Walktall catalogues, undergoes a management buyout.

• Alex Theophanous and his wife Alexa Till sell their controlling stake in AlexandAlexa.com to Tiger Global Management. The deal values the childrenswear etailer at £16 million.

• Apparel retailer Jane Norman becomes the latest victim on the high street, collapsing into administration. Edinburgh Woollen Mill buys 33 stores and all of Jane Norman’s stock in a pre-packaged deal with the administrators.

• TJ Hughes, the department-store chain that underwent a management buyout backed by turnaround specialist Endless in March, appoints administrators and closes 22 stores with the loss of more than 1,000 jobs. In August, Lewis Home Retail, part of The Benross Group, buys the brand, website and saves certain stores.

• Response handling and fulfilment firm Orbital acquires some of the assets of craft supplies cataloguer Readicut on 15th June from the administrator.

July
• Amazon announces plans to acquire The Book Depository, a UK-based etailer and a specialist in hard-to-find books.

• US retailer Crate & Barrel joins Macy’s and Williams-Sonoma in opening up its website to international customers.

• Derby House, a cataloguer of equestrian equipment, closes all but one of its stores to focus on its online business.

• Mohamed al-Fayed, the former owner of Harrods, buys private-sales website Cocosa from Bauer Media for an undisclosed sum.

• Gardening supplies cataloguer Two Wests and Elliott secures a £50,000 loan from UK Steel Enterprise to help grow the business.

• Office products wholesaler Spicers is sold for £200 million to Spanish paper group Unipapel. Following completion of the deal, Better Capital, the investment vehicle that bought Readers’ Digest in April 2010, buys the UK and Ireland business of Spicers.

• Flying Brands, the owner of Flying Flowers and Gardening Direct, falls into the red, recording a pretax loss of £210,000 in the first half of 2011, compared with a profit of £1.39 million in the same period 2010. That doesn’t stop it from entering the personalised card market. It signs a deal with online retailer Hephalump.com.

• Photobox, the online photo printing firm mergers with Moonpig.com in a deal valuing the greetings-card business at £120 million.

• The trade and assets of Pindar’s web offset and bindery division are acquired out of administration by York Mailing.

• Advent Venture Partners and WorldStores’ existing investor Balderton provide funds of £8.5 million allowing WorldStores to expand into new categories, develop its service offering and launch a print catalogue.

• Greetings-card retailer Card Factory acquires personalised gifts etailer GettingPersonal.co.uk from private-equity owner Isis.

August
• Headlines are dominated by four nights of rioting across London and other major cities in England.

• Online beauty products retailers LoveLula and Zuneta merge to form Zulu Beauty. The deal is backed by investment from Forward Venture Partners.

• Lombok becomes the latest furniture retailer to be hit by a slowdown in consumer spending. The retailer closes half of its stores, less than two years after it was bought out of a prepack administration by Privet Capital.

• Apparel cataloguer/retailer Boden plans to open a French-language website.

• Floors-2-Go falls into administration, closing 53 stores and axing 192 jobs.
Thirty-five stores continue to trade and 162 jobs are saved after part of the business was sold to Nixon & Hope, led by two former Floors-2-Go managers.

• Upmarket lingerie retailer Rigby & Peller sells the majority stake in the business to Belgian luxury apparel group Van de Velde for £8 million.

• The Office of Fair Trading is investigates the acquisition of online retailer eSpares by Connect Distribution Services. The acquisition, for a rumoured £4 million is subsequently cleared by the OFT in November.

• Tesco withdraws from Japan, selling its smallest international retail business.

September
• Japanese online marketplace Rakuten adds Play.com to its portfolio, paying a surprisingly low figure of £25 million.

• Next announces plans to expand into Russia, China and Japan within the next six months via localised websites.

• Struggling apparel retailer Alexon is placed into administration and subsequently sold to private equity firm Sun Capital Partners.

• Following another profits warning, multititle catalogue group Flying Brands agrees to sell part of its premises at Retreat Farm, comprising unused office space and employee accommodation, to a Jersey-based property developer.

October
• RIP Steve Jobs. The visionary leader of technology firm Apple dies, aged 56.

• An upgrade to warehouse management systems at the end of August has an adverse impact on amount of stock and range of sizes reaching Superdry's UK stores in September. The retailer expects the disruption to dent profits by up to £9 million.

• Sainsbury’s buys Global Media Vault, the company that provides its online entertainment platform, from MBL Group for £1 million.

• Tesco extends its online apparel business to international markets, launching its clothingattesco.com to Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary and more.

• Shop Direct also announces international expansion with the launch of Very into the USA and 47 other countries.

• John Partridge, the English country clothing label, gears up for a relaunch under new ownership and creative direction. Led by former Penny Plain managing director Nick Oliver, the label has secured an investment agreement with venture capital company FW Capital and business angel Anne Holliday.

• Home Retail is launching Argos into China via a joint venture with home appliance manufacturer Haier Group.

• Vistaprint acquires Albumprinter, a Dutch photo book specialist for up to €65 million (£57 million, $89 million). In the UK, Albumprinter operates Bonusprint.

November
• Asos ramps up its overseas operations by installing “small in-country teams” in the countries where it operates websites. The teams expected to be in place in early 2012. Further, work is being carried out on the Asos ecommerce platform in preparation for support for all language character sets and a launch into the Russian and Chinese markets.

• Premier Farnell completes the refinancing of its banking debt through establishing a £200 million, five-year multicurrency revolving facility with a banking syndicate including Barclays, Bank of America, HSBC, RBS and Santander. It has also issued $235 million (£175 million) in private placement notes.

• MFI relaunches as an online retailer. The MFI brand was bought by Walker Capital, which also operates Victoria Plumb, an online and mail order bathroom retailer, in 2010.

• Kesa divests Comet and its subsidiaries for £2.

• Best Buy closes its “big box” stores in the UK in a bid to stem losses. It incurred operating losses of £62 million in the year ended 31 March 2011 and £47 million in the six months to 30 September 2011.

• Sex-toy retailer Lovehoney buys luxury erotic brand Coco de Mer.

• Following its acquisition of Ethical Superstore in March, Spark Etail has adds another eco-friendly business to its portfolio: Spirit of Nature.

• Sales at Arcadia, which operates Topshop, Burton and Dorothy Perkins, are down 22 percent, to £297.4 million in the year to 27th August. It made a pretax profit of £133.1 million—a 38 percent decline.

• Devon-based Truprint wins its three-year legal case with HM Revenue & Customs on whether it should have been charged VAT on sales of photobooks.

• CatEx Direct Commerce Association officially announces the launch of its TV-shopping channel The Dept Store. The channel goes “as live” in February.

December
• Private equity firm Cinven, which operates Pizza Express, considers a £150 million takeover of struggling nursery and maternity products retailer Mothercare. In March, Mothercare announced the closure of approximately 110 in-town stores and negotiate 40 rent reductions by March 2013.

• In a move that breaks with DIY tradition, Wickes is opening its first high street store.

• The tough trading on the high street has claimed its latest victim. Shoe retailer Barratts Priceless Group, which has 191 stores across the UK trading as Barratts and Priceless Shoes and 371 concessions, called in administrators from Deloitte.

• Portsmouth-based cycling and trisports retailer Wiggle is acquired by private equity firm Bridgepoint for £180 million.

• TP Toys, a supplier of trampolines and climbing frames for retailers including Tesco, John Lewis and the Early Learning Centre, has gone into administration with 100 redundancies expected as a result. Its subsidiary, Muddy Puddles, an online retailer/cataloguer of children’s outdoor clothing, continues to trade as normal and is unaffected by the administration of its parent.

• N Brown Group secures a £100 million funding deal to help the business achieve its future growth plans—in the UK and overseas.

• The Office of Fair Trading opens an investigation into the trading practices of MyCity Deal, trading as Groupon UK.