Morrisons makes e-commerce move
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Morrisons has made its first move into online retail with the acquisition of Kiddicare.com.
The supermarket has agreed to buy the online baby wear retailer in a £70m deal.
Morrisons plans to launch its online operations in 2012. It will build its online non-food business by developing the kiddicare.com platform and using its “state of the art freehold distribution facility”.
Dalton Philips, chief executive of Morrisons, says: “This acquisition brings not only a respected, successful and fast growing specialist retailer into the Morrisons group but also a robust, scalable and highly advanced technology platform around which we can begin to build our e-commerce offer.”
Kiddicare is the UK’s leading specialist online retailer of baby products and operates an award winning e-commerce platform.
It reported turnover of £37.5m in 2010. Kiddicare has grown its business 75% in the past three years and 80% of its business comes from online.
Kiddicare will continue to operate separately led by its CEO Scott Weavers-Wright.
Analysts say the “surprise” diversification into online baby retail indicates “new thinking” in the business and suggests that Dalton Philips’ plan for Morrisons is not “more of the same”.
YouGov Insight:
Morrisons
· 12% of main shoppers do the bulk of their shopping at Morrisons
· The most popular reason given for shopping at Morrisons is that there are ‘plenty of special offers’
· Morrisons shoppers are most likely to visit Tesco in order to do their secondary shopping with half of Morrisons shoppers doing so
· The highest regional penetration for Morrisons shoppers is in Scotland and the Midlands (both 19%)
Click herefor more information on this YouGov market report
Readers' comments (2)
Anonymous | Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:42 am
A great move,as a Morrisons shareholder I have been waiting for this move,they have bought a well run company which will be the springboard for a full on line shopping site.
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Anonymous | Tue, 15 Feb 2011 1:47 pm
I think they under estimate the challenges - quickie quick win solution rarely do the business and are more pasinful. You can't buy a site copy it, reskin it, stick your stock in it and sail into the sunset happy and making millions. I hope they have their eyes open to the challenges ahead and don't have another "safeway" moment but this time online!!
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