Littlewoods.com has hailed the launch of its
exclusive collection by designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen as the
most successful unveiling of a home and living range in its
80-year history. The first week of sales of the LLB collection,
which includes furniture, lighting, homewares and flooring, beat
the online department store’s previous home and living record by
292 per cent. Littlewoods largely attributes the success to the
broadcast of its live and interactive TV show on Facebook and
mobile on 13th June. More than 4,000 people streamed the one-hour
show live, with 22 per cent of those choosing to watch via their
smartphones.
Yesterday, Littlewoods parent company Shop
Direct announced the appointment of Alex Baldock as its
new chief executive officer, succeeding Mark Newton-Jones.
Apparel, health and beauty and entertainment online retailer
The Hut Group reported growth of 71 per cent for
the first three months of 2012.
The company, which operates Lookfantastic.com,
Iwantoneofthose.com and
Allsole.com, said its strategy of exiting its
white-label operations and moving away from music and book
categories in order to diversify into higher margin categories,
helped revenues treble in the last two years. To further broaden
its offering and reach a broader customer demographic, The Hut
Group is launching MyVitamins.com later in 2012,
to complement its sports-nutrition business
MyProtein.com. Last month, The Hut renewed and
extended its banking facilities with Barclays.
QVC UK has launched a free android app following
the success of its iPhone app, which now takes 5 per cent of
sales.
Reaction to the collapsed Farepak directors’
trial concludes Farepak could probably survived if its bank HBOS,
had lent it an extra £3 million to £5 million. While
HBOS had not acted illegally, the Guardian
reports that high court judge Mr Justice Peter Smith questioned
the bank executives’ morals. A statement on the website of
Unfairpak, a consumer group set up to fight for the
rights of the out-of-pocket savers ends with “HBOS, shame
on you”.
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