On Friday, Home Retail Group, the parent company
of Argos and Homebase,
confirmed it had acquired the rights for the
Habitat brand in the UK and Ireland. In
addition, Home Retail bought the UK Habitat website and three
London stores for a total consideration of £24.5 million.
The rest of Habitat’s 30 stores have been put into
administration, with the potential loss of hundreds of jobs. The
Independent, the Guardian and the Telegraph mourn Habitat’s demise and ponder
about its future as a concession in Homebase’s stores.
Seeds and plants cataloguer Thompson & Morgan
has suspended 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. Paul Hansord, managing director,
told the Telegraph it was “highly
unlikely” that Thompson & Morgan’s seed were responsible
for the outbreak and had no plans to recall the products.
However, on the Thompson & Morgan website this morning, several
varieties of sprouting seeds were listed as “out of
stock” having been removed from sale.
Entertainment products retailer HMV has sold its
Canadian business to turnaround specialist Hilco UK for £2
million. The deal follows the divestment of bookstore
Waterstone’s in
May. HMV has had a presence in Canada since 1986, and
currently operates 121 stores and the HMV.ca website.
Gross sales at online grocer Ocado are up 20.8
percent to £296.7 million in the half year to 15th May.
EBITDA increased by 78.7 percent to £14.3 million, while
operating profit was £200,000 compared with a £6.7
million loss last year. During the half, Ocado entered into a
supply partnership with French supermarket Carrefour Group to
trial a range of authentic French produce in the UK. Further,
Ocado is seeing a huge uptake in orders via mobile devices;
mobiles were used in 15 percent of checkouts, up 150 percent on
the first half of last year.
In related news, Jon Rudoe, currently head of retail at
Ocado, is moving to Sainsbury’s
in July where he will be director of online. Tanya Lawler,
currently the supermarket’s director of direct channels, takes up
the new role as Sainsbury’s director of digital. The appointments
come as Sainsbury’s announces plans to ramp up its cross-channel
strategy through the expansion of its click and collect service
to more than 800 stores by December.
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