Home shopping giant N Brown has sold its Zendor fulfilment division and bought women’s clothing business Nightingales out of administration.

The retailer said that the sale of Zendor, for£3.8 million, “satisfactorily completes the disposal of all non-core activities”.

Nightingales’£770,000 purchase gives N Brown “a premium brand within the upmarket ladies’ clothing sector", as well as more than 150,000 customer names, the retailer said.

N Brown chief executive Alan White said: “The sale of Zendor enables us to concentrate on our core strategy of growth in the catalogue and internet retail market. Nightingales will complement our other brands.”

Numis analyst Ramona Tipnis was pleased by the disposal of Zendor, which she said was unsustainable and a distraction for management.

She welcomed the Nightingales acquisition and said: “While Nightingales is currently loss-making, N Brown can help with a wider product range, tight stock management and efficient warehousing and despatch to, at the very least, restore it to where it was 12 to 18 months ago – ie, generating profits of about£1 million.”

Topics