Plus-size fashion retailer Elvi is pursuing a sale or new investment little more than a year after being acquired by Langholm Capital for £10 million.

BDO Stoy Hayward, which is advising Elvi, is expected to issue an information memorandum to interested parties next week.

Former White Company managing director Oliver Spark, who led the buy-out of Elvi in October 2006, confirmed a disposal or introduction of additional investors were on the cards, but rejected industry speculation that a fire sale was under way.

He said: “Venture capital funds are always looking at the next stage. We’ve done an enormous amount and BDO is doing a review to see if there are other investors that might like to come in or whether a trade sale is possible.”

One source said that Elvi had suffered as a result of increased overheads and marketing costs and disappointing sales. However, Spark revealed that recent trading had been encouraging and a new web site was performing well.

He said: “We’ve been up double digit in the past couple of weeks. The web site has been up for 13 weeks and is going extremely well – last week it was our number one till.”

Elvi has 28 shops and 63 concessions in stores including Debenhams, House of Fraser and John Lewis.

On joining the business, Spark set himself the objective of doubling turnover to£40 million in four years.

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