Littlewoods Shop Direct has been credited with taking a 42 per cent share of the UK consumers’ annual home shopping spend on sportswear. A report by TNS Worldpanel said that Littlewoods supplied its customers with more than 3 million sportswear garments last year and that nearly a third of its sportswear orders were placed online.

Private equity group 3i will support remaining co-founding director and Agent Provocateur shareholder Joseph Corre in the development of the lingerie brand following its investment of £60 million for an 80 per cent stake. Serena Rees, Corre’s estranged wife, who jointly founded Agent Provocateur will leave the group but retains a minority shareholding, whilst Stuart Rose joins as chairman.

Screwfix Direct has collaborated with HowTo.tv to produce a series of DIY videos that enable customers to buy the products featured while watching the clips. The first programme, available via the web, mobile phone and downloadable podcast, provides instructions on fitting a shower.

The 5p in the £1 compensation that the 120,000 duped Farepak customers were promised is unlikely to materialise in time for Christmas 2008. Inevitably this will lead to further negative media coverage which the direct sector can do well without.

Companies wishing to gain a useful head start on the preparation of their entries into the ECMOD Awards can obtain entry forms now. The Awards cover entrants’ work and achievements for the full current calendar year Jan-Dec 2007 and are based on merchandise speciality with a range of opportunities for business to business and business to consumer marketers. The closing date for entries is 1st February 2008 with the shortlist revealed on 20th February and trophies presented at the lavish gala ECMOD Awards Dinner at the Natural History Museum on 5th March 2008.

John Brown’s catalogue design division CodeLondon is creating Beyond Beauty, a Christmas health and beauty title for Superdrug. Some 2 million copies will be printed primarily for distribution in- store.