Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group has acquired eBuyer, one of the UK’s largest technology retailers, out of administration.
eBuyer, founded in Sheffield in 1999 and now based in Howden in the East Riding of Yorkshire, faced a winding-up petition at the weekend from its landlord Urban Logistics Acquisitions 6 Ltd over unpaid rent.
The firm had suffered a 22% drop in revenue to £137m in its latest published results, covering the period from 31st December 2023, and fell from a modest profit to operating losses of £1.8m. It subsequently shed 50 jobs.
Earlier today administrators Alastair Massey and Tony Wright of FRP Advisory were appointed while it was reported that its eCommerce website had been shut down. However, it is now live again.
The firm sells CPUs, motherboards, memory products, laptops, televisions, monitors and more through its eCommerce operation. It will now join listed Frasers, the group behind Sports Direct, House of Fraser and GAME, among other brands.
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eBuyer was owned by billionaire Malcolm Healey’s West Retail Group, parent company of Wren Kitchens, for 19 years before it was sold to Realtime Holdings – then owned by Cambridge-based investor Mark Reed and industry veteran Rich Marsden – in a reported £26m deal in 2023.
As recently as 2021 it turned over £241m and employed more than 200 people. However expansion plans were quickly put on hold and the company was not able to ride out the storm it labelled a ‘credit crunch’.
Tony Wright, partner at FRP Advisory, said: “Frasers Group has an established record of successfully taking retail brands forward and unlocking their potential. eBuyer is a recognised name in the consumer technology space, and this transaction provides a platform it can use to reestablish its position as one of the UK’s largest PC components retailers.”
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