Apparel and homewares cataloguer/retailer The White
Company, which had sales of £102 million in the
year to 26th March, has named its new chief executive. Will
Kernan, currently chief operating officer at retailer New
Look will succeed Patricia Alford-Burnett when she steps
down in spring 2012. The company also announced the appointment
of Barry Wyse as its first ecommerce director. Wyse joins from
eCommera where he led the retail practice team,
providing consulting and analytics services. Prior to eCommera,
he was head of ecommerce at Arcadia and worked
at Dell for 11 years where he held senior online
sales and marketing roles. Wyse will be instrumental in
developing The White Company’s international ecommerce
proposition and enhancing its cross-channel customer
experience.
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. Based in Kidderminster, the TP
business has operated for more than 50 years and turned over
£12 million in 2011. Administrator Geoffrey Martin & Co is
seeking buyers for the company’s core business as well as
investment in its profitable subsidiary, Muddy
Puddles. 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.
Online sportswear retailer Kitbag.com has teamed
with bookmaker Betfred to offer members of both
sites exclusive introductory deals and promotions including free
bets and discounts on sports merchandise and equipment at
Kitbag.com.
Plus-size apparel retailer Evans has launched an
online shop for its German customers, EvansMode.de is localised
for the German market but also allows expats living in Germany to
shop in English with euro pricing.
Following a threefold increase in the number of visitors to the
Virgin Wines website in the last year compared
to the previous year, the online wine retailer has worked with
software company Mobify to create a mobile website. The new
Virgin Wines mobile site offers a stripped down version of the
desktop and a streamlined “My Account” facility, with
further development planned to introduce auctions and to enable
customers to rate their wines at a later date.
Blacks Leisure Group, which operates outdoor kit
retailer Millets, has put itself up for sale in
a bid to save the loss-making business from collapse. As at 5th
December 2011, the group’s net bank debt was approximately
£36 million.
This Monday was declared Cyber Monday, the busiest online
shopping day of the year for shoppers in the run-up to Christmas.
Payments specialist Sage Pay processed hundreds of thousands of
transactions, showing growth of more than 17 percent compared
with this time on Cyber Monday last year. The spending average
has also grown to £91 on gifts for friends and family, an
increase of £3 over the previous year.
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