|
Home:
Littlewoods Home Shopping, now named Shop Direct, have announced
the cut of one thousand and five hundred jobs from it's call
centre's in January 2010. Nine hundred jobs will be lost in
Sunderland, another northern town which will be effected is
Burnley in Lancashire, alongside one location in Wales, Newtown.
The Littlewoods and Index brands were both ran by Shop Direct,
and have both had a strong online presence. Shop Direct have
also created a new brand name, Very.co.uk. The Littlewoods
Index and Index brands were owned by Littlewoods until 2005.
The Index brand was a catalogue general goods retailer, very
much in the model of Argos. Index had it's own stores and
stores located within Littlewoods department stores.
The real world business of Index was then bought
by Argos in 2005. Argos took over the operation of all their
stores and staff. Argos also bought the rights to the Index.co.uk
site. The brand is now defunct, as the stores were rebranded
to Argos. The Index business was a significant drain on Littlewoods,
losing in the region of one hundred millions pounds over twenty
years.
The Littlewoods side of the business was started
and owned by the Moores family of Liverpool from 1923 to 2002.
It was then sold to the Barclay brothers (owners of the Daily
Telegraph) for seven hundred and fifty million. The brothers
have renamed the business the Littlewoods Shop Direct Group
and finally to the Shop Direct Group.
The merger of the Littlewoods, Shop Direct and
Great Universal businesses into one group, made the company
the biggest home shopping/catalogue company in the UK. The
group has run brand name websites and catalogues such as,
Additions Direct, Abound, Sport-e, Great Universal, Littlewoods
Direct, Marshall Ward, Choice, and Kays.
Until around 2005, the meat of the business
was real world catalogue sales by phone and post. But this
percentage of sales has been overtaken by online business.
And this is perhaps one of the reasons the call centre staff
have been cut. Due to sales transferring from phone to online.
Shop Direct Group are expected to post positive
sales numbers for the January Sales period of business. Some
analysts expect the January Ssales period could by
up 25% on 2009 figures.
|
