According to the Liverpool Daily Post, Shop
Direct achieved sales of more than £50 million in
the seven days leading up to–and on–“Mega Monday”,
6th December. It handled approximately 7,000 orders an hour on
Monday, double last year’s Christmas rush.
A VAT rebate helped voucher and Christmas-savings club business
Park Group announce a profit for the first half
of 2010. Revenue rose 49 percent to £50.9 million and profit
was £500,000 in the six months to 30th September compared
with a £4.2 million loss in the equivalent period last year.
In its Christmas savings-club business, sales were up 37 percent
to £5.8 million, whilst its online gift voucher arm,
Highstreetvouchers.com, grew
“robustly” generating sales of £2.7 million.
Sales at music, games, and DVD retailer HMV
declined 6.7 percent in the 26 weeks ended 23rd October, from
£797 million in 2009 to £749.5 million. Losses also
widened, with the retailer posting a post-tax loss of £30.5
million this year, compared with £17.8 million in
2009.
MasterCard has acknowledged that a hacking attack compromised its
payment processing services. The attack, commonly thought to have
been perpetrated by a global group of hackers and
freedom-of-speech activists, crippled the processing of
MasterCard SecureCode (3D Secure) transactions yesterday. The
attack had a knock-on effect on payment processing firm
SecureTrading, which published a statement on its website
explaining that “all MasterCard and Maestro transactions
cannot be processed via 3D Secure. This is affecting all payment
service providers and is not SecureTrading specific.” As
the News Roundup went live, the Visa Europe website was
inaccessible. The Guardian has more on the story.
The Guardian looks into “Offshore
fulfilment…a creature of happy accident and the ruthlessness of
good entrepreneurs in exploiting tax advantages,” and the
process of shipping goods from the Channel Islands to the UK
VAT-free. Greeting-cards etailer Moonpig,
multibrand group The Hut, and IT products
website 7DayShop are mentioned in the article,
among others.
Electronic components giant Premier Farnell
continued to grow strongly in its third quarter, posting a group
sales rise of 23.3 percent and a 48.5 percent jump in group
operating profit during the period.
The Telegraph gets set for Christmas chez
Chrissie Rucker and Nick Wheeler.
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