Poundworld is a British value variety store that sells most of its items for £1. The chain was founded in 1974 by Yorkshire-based father and son team Chris Edwards Sr. and Chris Edwards Jr. In contrast to many high street retailers, Poundworld maintained strong sales and growth during the global recession that started in 2007.
Poundworld's product range consists of over 6,000 items including groceries, health and beauty, toiletries, cleaning products and pet care, some of them known brands; it has 335 stores in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland; and it was planning to open 150 new stores within three years.
Its larger rival in the market is Poundland. A series on BBC One entitled Pound Shop Wars, broadcast between 2012 and 2015, focused on Poundworld and its rivals.
As well as all of its £1 lines, Poundworld introduced a range of multi-price products across its estate of stores in 2017 to offer customers 'More Choice, More Savings'.
Due to Brexit concequences, high competition from the addition of multi-price products combined with the weak pound, Poundworld entered administration in June 2018. Closing sales began in stores late that month.
Video Poundworld
History
The chain originated in 1974, when Chris Edwards Sr. set up a market stall in his home town of Wakefield. Edwards initially set up a multi-price store called "Bargain Centre", before switching to a single-price format in 1997, trading as "Everything's £1".
Since the recession that started in 2007, Poundworld has expanded rapidly. Its sales grew by 42% in 2010 to 2011, and increased by 55% with revenues of £200M in 2012. Its expansion meant that the company required larger premises, and it relocated its head offices to the largest unit in Yorkshire's main warehousing and distribution base. It also opened an overseas office in Shanghai during this period.
In October 2013, Poundworld partnered with the Marie Curie Cancer Care charity, which it had already supported during 2013's Great Daffodil Appeal. To date, the company has raised in excess of £900,000 to help care for those (and their families) living with a terminal illness.
In November 2013, Poundworld opened its first multi price retail store under the Bargain Buys name in Walsall. Bargain Buys was originally and briefly traded as Discount UK, with the name change allowing the chain to compete more closely with its rivals in the market. The company planned to open a further 100 stores in the next three years.
In July 2014, the store secured a £26m loan from Santander to finance its stated aim of increasing its approximately 240 stores by 40 or 50 a year for the next three years, and to strengthen its overseas supply chain from where about 30% of its supplies are sourced.
The Edwards (father and son) were placed at Number 12 in Management Today's annual list of Britain's Top 100 Entrepreneurs in October 2014. In the same month, Poundworld Retail was named one of the United Kingdom's fastest growing retailers in the Sunday Times Grant Thornton Top Track 250.
On 15 May 2015, the company announced that it had sold a majority stake in the business to private equity firm TPG Capital for £150 million, with Christopher Edwards, his son, and other senior executives retaining a substantial minority holding, allowing the family to maintain the day-to-day running of the business. Poundworld announced that the investment from TPG would allow the business to grow, with further plans for store expansion. Shortly after the deal, the company announced that it had begun construction of a new distribution centre in Normanton as part of a plan to create 4,000 jobs and open a further 200 new stores in the next three years.
Following a review of the business, TPG had proposed to put the company through a Company Voluntary Arrangement, to restructure the business by closing around 100 of its existing 355 stores. However, during the process TPG were approached by third parties, and agreed in May 2018 to put the CVA process on hold, and to look at a sale of the business. In June 2018, TPG pulled out of talks to buy Poundworld.
Maps Poundworld
Online
In May 2012, the company launched a wholesale website, targeted at market traders, eBay sellers and independent retailers. The website offers over 2,000 products including cleaning, DIY, stationery and pet care. Since launching online, the operation has seen a sales increase of 400%.
The company followed this in February 2014 by launching a retail online pound store named poundshop.com. Poundworld supplied stock and product images for the single price website - the first of its kind. However, Poundworld decided to leave the project after six months, citing "a failure to reach a shared vision" with Smith. It launched another online shop in April 2015: Poundworld Plus, offering over 4,000 products, all at £1. It later changed the website name to Poundworld.co.uk.
Notable products
In June 2013, Poundworld launched a comfort bra priced at £1. 100,000 were bought in a few hours.
In November 2014, the company started selling a range of merchandise relating to the film by Disney, Frozen. At Poundworld's new store opening in Merthyr Tydfil in October, people waited for over an hour before it opened, with fights breaking out as stocks ran low. There were similar crowds at the new Nottingham store in November.
ASA ruling on slogan
In October 2014, The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that Poundworld's "Everything £1" slogan was misleading, as some items were priced at up to £8.99. Poundworld stated that the products in question were 'Manager Specials' and were only run at Christmas and occasionally throughout the year.
Pound Shop Wars
In 2012, the company was the subject of a BBC documentary series, Pound Shop Wars, that focused on the competition between Poundworld and its rivals. After the initial hour long pilot, the four episode series was broadcast in the beginning of 2014. A second series of eight episodes was screened in autumn 2015.
Administration
After rescue talks with potential buyer R Capital failed, the company entered administration on 11 June 2018, the same day electrical retailer Maplin became defunct. The administrators, Deloitte are continuing to run the business as normal to-date.
On 19 June, one hundred staff from the company's head office were made redundant. A day later, the company began closing down sales at all of its over 300 stores, although they stated that no stores were "definitely" closing. A further 20 Head Office staff were made redundant on Friday 29 June.
After much speculation in the media it emerged that the founder, Chris Edwards, was in talks to rescue the struggling business but there were bitter divisions between Edwards and the Administrators (Deloitte). The discussions appeared to come to a sudden conclusion on 5th July 2018 when it was reported that Edwards bid had been rejected thus placing the future of the business in fresh doubt.
On 10th July 2018 Deloitte confirmed that the first 25 of the troubled retailers stores would formally close. The last day of trading for these 25 was to be Sunday 15th July resulting in the loss of a reported 242 jobs.
References
External links
- Poundworld Official website
- Bargain Buys Official website
Source of article : Wikipedia
0 Comments