Clintons, the UK’s second largest standalone specialist greeting card chain, has been put up for sale by its owners, the Weiss family.
Sky News has just announced that the 334-store chain, which is owned by the Weiss family (who previously also wholly owned UKG and its parent company, American Greetings) has appointed KPMG to oversee ‘a review of strategic options’.
This news comes seven years after the Weiss family acquired Clintons from the administrative receivers in order to recover some of the monies owed to UKG and to safeguard a supply chain for the publisher.
According to Sky News, prospective bidders have already been contacted by KPMG.
This development comes just over a month after Clintons’ buying team moved out of its historic headquarters, in Loughton to relocate to the 4,000 square foot space above its Loughton High Street store. Coinciding with this shift other headquarters’ functions have relocated to the retail group’s Corby premises in Northampton where its in-house creative hub has been established. (https://www.pgbuzz.net/clintons-hq-moves-to-above-its-loughton-store/)
Explaining about these geographical changes, which reflects the increasing vertical integration of the business, Eddie Shepherd, ceo of Clintons said: “The move out of an expensive legacy site into a more compact, efficient premises is both a welcome and necessary move. The financial benefit achieved through this move will be invested back into the business to support our strategy of becoming a more vertically integrated, standalone business.”
