Private equity group to buy Findel?
An unnamed equity firm is considering offering £342 million to acquire multititle mailer Findel, according to the Daily Mail. The article also states that rival mailer N Brown Group has approached the Findel board about buying the business. Findel puts its healthcare division up for sale earlier this year. Its other brands include Express Gifts, Kleeneze, Kitbag, and Hope Education.

Arcandor shuts German Quelle catalogue
Arcandor, the insolvent German retailer, is shutting its Quelle German catalogue, resulting in 1,500 redundancies. Quelle’s Swiss, Austrian, and Eastern European units are still for sale, as is Arcandor’s Primondo unit of speciality catalogues, which include fashion titles Afibel and Peter Hahn in the UK.

Home Retail Group sales beat expectations
Half-year sales at Home Retail Group rose 3 percent, to nearly £2.81 billion, exceeding expectations. For the 26 weeks to 29th August, like-for-like sales at Argos fell 2 percent but rose 3 percent at Homebase. Benchmark profit before tax inched up 1 percent, to £123 million. The web now accounts for 28 percent of Argos’s sales. 

Flying Brands quarterly sales down 2 percent
For the three months to 2nd October, Flying Brands posted sales from continuing operations of £5.5 million, down 2 percent from the comparable period of 2008. Sales at its Gardening Direct business were up 30 percent, to £2.3 million. Sales at its Flying Flowers brand fell 12.5 percent, to £1.4 million, but they were more-profitable sales than last year’s. 

Sales down at Redcats Group
Sales at PPR’s Redcats Group catalogue division for the first nine months of 2009 were down 9.5 percent from the comparable period of last year. Third-quarter sales fell 10.2 percent. La Redoute France was responsible for much of the decline, with third-quarter sales down 19 percent. In the UK, Redcats owns the La Redoute, Vertbaudet, and Daxon brands. 

Get smart about protecting your intellectual property
Domain names, catalogue and website images, and brand logos are intangible but critical assets of your business. As such, they need protecting. Find out what you should be doing to protect your intellectual property at catalog-biz.com.

Coming up in Catalogue e-business magazine

• November/December issue: special focus on postal and carrier options, plus predictive analytics, scalable logistics, and more
• January issue: business health check—what you need to know and do to ensure your company is ready to make the most of 2010