Men’s grooming cataloguer/etailer Mankind Direct
has been acquired by The Hut Group for £2.5
million in cash. Mankind Direct was founded by Paul Jameson and
Hilary Andrews in 2001 and now generates approximately £5
million in sales. This is the latest in a string of acquisitions
by The Hut, which saw it buy beauty products etailer
LookFantastic for £18.5 million in November
and gifts and gadgets website I Want One of
Those in August.
Online retailer BuyMobilePhones.net has been
ranked first in the The Sunday Times Virgin Fast Track 100 list.
The business saw annual sales increase 340 percent in the fiscal
year 2009/10. Other retailers in the list include SDK
Jewllers, the parent company of
WatchShop.com in 16th place; greetings card
etailer Moonpig, which moves up from 22nd place
last year to 17th place; UK Flooring Direct in
24th place; Oak Furniture Land in 34th place;
preppy apparel retailer Jack Wills in 37th
place; online retailer Getting Personal, which
falls from 12th place to 51st place; Cath
Kidston, which climbs 17 places to 69. Also in the list
are apparel retailer Joules, bicycle and
accessories etailer Wiggle, M8 Group, the
operator of PetPlanet.co.uk and
Greenfingers.com, and men’s gifts etailer
Menkind.
Cath Kidston is eyeing the Far East for
expansion. The vintage homewares retailer is opening two shops
and a concession in Korea next year, and is mulling the opening
of stores in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China, writes the
Telegraph.
Sporting gear retailer Kitbag is expecting to
exceed last year’s busiest day by 40 percent. According to the
Manchester Evening News, Kitbag is expecting
sales of more than £1 million today, and doubled the number
of staff it employs to handle the rush.
Andy Thornton, a specialist supplier of
hospitality furnishings, has won a contract to supply a pub
interior for a Norwegian firm worth £270,000 and a
refurbishing job in Germany worth £360,000. In just the last
two weeks the firm has secured more than £1 million of new
orders reports the Yorkshire Business Desk.
The Journal, a newspaper for the north east of
England, profiles Andy Redfern, cofounder of Ethical
Superstore.
In the first 33 days of the November-December holiday shopping
season, US consumers spent $16.8 billion online, a 12 percent
increase on the same time last year, reports ComScore. The
busiest day online was last Monday, known as Cyber Monday,
“the heaviest online spending day on record” which
saw Americans spend $1.09 billion.
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