3 are saying goodbye to Superdrug and pulling 107 concessions from the high street retail chain, leaving just twenty in place.
The decision seems to come after poor sales showed the technical products 3 offered weren't appealing to Superdrugs typical customer.
3 set up shop in Superdrug following Hutchinson Whampoa's acquisition of the health & beauty chain back in 2002, giving the network a much needed high street presence.
Back in 2006 3 bought 95 link stores from O2, and with further direct stores their high street presence rocketed.
Even with the closure of these concessions, 3 will still have close to 300 sites.
A spokesman said “When 3 started as a business, we relied on third parties to grow customer numbers, but now we have built our own store group and we have a massive store expansion program. We have enough reach through our own stores now."
“We are not retreating from high street retail – it’s quite the opposite. We will continue our store expansion and expect to hit 300 stores by the end of the year. There's quite a lot of duplication between the Superdrug sites and the 3 store sites so for that reason we're coming out of 107 Superdrug stores." There will be sub-300 job losses including redundancies.
3 will be keeping 20 concessions which are located where the network's retail stores don't have any reach.
"We're in a consultation period with staff. It was announced to them on Thursday and Friday. Some of those people will be redeployed within the business within retail. There are other opportunities within the company as a whole. But we expect there to be some redundancies. Some will be voluntary." added the spokesman.
3 set up shop in Superdrug following Hutchinson Whampoa's acquisition of the health & beauty chain back in 2002, giving the network a much needed high street presence.
Back in 2006 3 bought 95 link stores from O2, and with further direct stores their high street presence rocketed.
Even with the closure of these concessions, 3 will still have close to 300 sites.
A spokesman said “When 3 started as a business, we relied on third parties to grow customer numbers, but now we have built our own store group and we have a massive store expansion program. We have enough reach through our own stores now."
“We are not retreating from high street retail – it’s quite the opposite. We will continue our store expansion and expect to hit 300 stores by the end of the year. There's quite a lot of duplication between the Superdrug sites and the 3 store sites so for that reason we're coming out of 107 Superdrug stores." There will be sub-300 job losses including redundancies.
3 will be keeping 20 concessions which are located where the network's retail stores don't have any reach.
"We're in a consultation period with staff. It was announced to them on Thursday and Friday. Some of those people will be redeployed within the business within retail. There are other opportunities within the company as a whole. But we expect there to be some redundancies. Some will be voluntary." added the spokesman.