UK's Morrison joins e-retail war
UK Supermarket, WM Morrison revealed that it had finally taken the plunge into online retail, splashing out £70 million on baby goods firm Kiddicare, says City AM
The supermarket giant has so far resisted the move to the Web while rivals like Sainsbury's, Tesco and Asda see online sales as vital to their financial health.
But the purchase of Kiddicare will give Morrisons a foothold in the non-food retail market. The UK's fourth largest supermarket chain has identified that as an area ripe for growth.
The Wall Street Journal states that, Morrisons has long lagged behind its rivals as the only major supermarket with no online presence and limited nonfood offerings.
This comes a week after UK peer Marks & Spencer Group said it was poaching Tesco's Web site CEO Laura Wade-Gery to overhaul its outdated online operations.
Management Today says Morrison's move into online retail has been mooted for a while now. Recent speculation has suggested it might be sniffing around online grocer Ocado, particularly after its biggest shareholder, John Lewis, sold up its remaining stake in the company last week, it says.
However, the publication says Kiddicare is an equally viable - and no doubt much cheaper - strategic option, offering a similarly 'state-of-the-art' distribution centre and online sales platform.
According to Management Today it should be able to teach Morrisons a lot about online retail, as Philips acknowledged today: Kiddicare is, he said, “a robust, scalable and highly advanced technology platform around which we can begin to build our e-commerce offer”.
Building its own capability from scratch would be an expensive and time-consuming business; this way it can benefit from Kiddicare's knowledge and experience
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