The parent company of online fashion retailer Boohoo.com made a
pretax profit of £139,000 in 2011, up almost 81 per cent on
2010’s £77,000. Turnover also increased, by 85 per cent, to
£24.5 million, writes the North West Business Desk. According to the
article, based on accounts filed at Companies House, Boohoo’s
growth was attributed to investment in customer service and
warehouse staffing.
Nicole Vanderbilt has decided to step down from her role as chief
executive of homewares and gifts website Mydeco.
She will leave in April to be replaced by current eCommerce
director Peter Bakker. Prior to joining Mydeco.com, Nicole worked
at Bebo and Google; a spokesperson for Mydeco said Vanderbilt is leaving the company as
“she feels like she has done everything she could have
done”.
An overhaul of IT systems at Savile Row tailor Gieves &
Hawkes has enabled the company to invest in its
ready-to-wear range and stripped out £1 million in stock. A
Microsoft Dynamics management system from K3 Retail redesigned
Gieves & Hawkes’ stock management, finance, reporting and supply
chain and as a result changed the way the company allocates
stock in its 11 stores, four concessions and its recently
relaunched eCommerce business. In-store staff now have the
ability to see stock levels in the warehouse and if a customer
asks for a tailored suit that is not available in-store at that
time, staff can check if the materials are available on the
system and still process the order. This greater overall
visibility overstock has helped to reduce the retailer’s stock
holding by 20 per cent, equating to a £1 million
saving.
Further, the new system has enabled Gieves & Hawkes to build a
new product line, from design to sourcing, to production and as
a result, it is now producing items as varied as shoes and
eyewear whereas just two years ago, 95 per cent of merchandise
sold was suit jackets and trousers.
The internet is a-buzz with rumours that
Amazon.com is mulling the launch of a
bricks-and-mortar store. According to the Good E Reader blog, Amazon will open a store
in its hometown of Seattle to sell its Kindle ereaders and
tablets.
For UK retailers, January 2012 was worse than 2011 but better
than 2010, making it the “second-worst” January since
the BRC-KPMG Retail Sales Monitor began in 1995. UK retail sales
values were down 0.3 per cent on a like-for-like basis from
January 2011. Food sales slowed sharply after their Christmas
boost, while non-food sales also weakened. Any gains “were
largely driven by widespread heavy discounting in clearance
sales”, reports the British Retail Consortium.
Argos is creating new jobs in Lutterworth, but
only at the expense of employees in Northamptonshire, reports the
Lutterworth Mail. The multichannel retailer
is moving its Corby, Northamptonshire distribution site to
Lutterworth, Leicestershire this autumn. The move will affect 440
staff at the Northamptonshire site, which is owned by Wincanton,
though all staff will be offered the option of relocating.
Direct marketing and media agency MediaLab Group
has acquired the majority share in Intelligent Data Ltd, a
Portsmouth-based data hosting and processing bureau. The deal
will enhance MediaLab’s current data hosting, analysis and
processing offering and will be rebranded as DataLab following
the purchase. The two companies had been working together for a
number of years.
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