EBay is to buy Germany-based secret-sales
website Brands4Friends. The online auction site
paid £128.9 million ($200 million, €150 million) for
Brands4Friends’ German business as well as its equity interests
in UK shopping club SecretSales.com and its Japanese operation,
brands4friends.jp.
Department-store chain John Lewis will invest
£250 million in its business next year, reports This Is Money. It will spend the money on
store initiatives and improving the John Lewis Direct arm,
including merging the high street and online systems “to
allow more flexibility when dealing with customers”.
Abel & Cole, the organic groceries purveyor, has
moved back into the black thanks to a cost-cutting programme and
a management restructure. The Telegraph reports that the company made a
£4.2 million pretax profit in the year ending August 2010,
compared with a £27 million loss in the previous year.
The snow has been dominating the news headlines today, here are
some of the retail-related pieces we came across: From the
Guardian–Snow may prevent Christmas presents arriving on
time, freight firms warn; from the Telegraph–Snow: supermarkets struggle with online
deliveries; from the Independent–Economy feels chill as UK grinds to a
halt.
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