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Astley Clarke secures investment, extends global reach
Online jeweller Astley Clarke has secured a second round of investment from Carmen Busquets, taking her total investment in the business to $1.2 million (approximately £747,000). Fashion entrepreneur Busquets is a founding investor and board director of Net-a-
Porter.com; she now joins the Astley Clarke board. This round of investment will be used to further drive brand awareness and expansion to international markets. The London-based jeweller opened a website specifically for US and Canadian customers in April and sees 10 percent of total turnover generated by the US market.
UK-style
postcodes for BFPO addresses
Together with the Ministry of Defence and British Forces Post Office (BFPO), Royal Mail has introduced UK-style postcodes for 100,000 service personnel and their families in places such as Germany, Cyprus and the Falkland Islands.
The funds will also be used to develop new jewellery collections and interactive technologies
on the Astley Clarke website to increase customer engagement online.
The development means improved access to online products and services for service personnel based overseas. Currently BFPO numbers are not compatible with many online ordering systems, including credit agencies. However, under the changes, service personnel will now be able to order everyday products online more easily. For online retailers it means being able to make their goods and services available to British Forces stationed around the world. BFPO numbers take the form BFPO 123. Each BFPO number will be linked with a unique UK style—but non-geographic—postcode solely for use online. BFPO numbers as the location descriptor for mail are to be retained.
Debenhams invests in multichannel
Debenhams delivered better-than- expected profits in the first half of the year against the backdrop of a difficult market. Pretax profit edged up 1.4 percent to £127.1 million, while gross transaction value grew 1.4 percent to £1.48 billion. Online sales continued to grow strongly, increasing by 34.7 percent to £124.3 million for the first half (excluding Debenhams’ Nordic business Magasin). Mobile is Debenhams’ fastest- growing channel and 20 percent of online traffic is now generated by mobile devices. EBITDA in the multichannel arm increased by 36.4 percent as initiatives to cut fulfilment costs started to take effect; Debenhams is now using an “endless aisle” model that uses stock from the store base as well as fulfilment centres to
meet customer demand. The company estimates that some £10 million of potentially lost sales were captured during the period.
The company has set its sights on achieving online sales of £500 million in the “medium term” and expects £100 million to be generated by international sales. During the first half of the year, the number of countries Debenhams delivers to increased from seven to 40. This will increase again to 67 by the end of the summer, it says. The first local language, local currency website will be officially launched in Germany this month to be followed by a number of other sites over the coming months, facilitated by Debenhams’ investment in the IBM Websphere 7 platform.
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