UK retailer Sainsbury's has announced that it will be selling its own brand Tu clothing range on the Argos website from 25 April.
With the new arrangement, customers will be able to receive next day home delivery on clothing orders, or free collection from 1,100 Sainsbury's and Argos stores across the country.
Tu clothing, which includes ranges for men, women and children, contributes nearly £1 billion to annual sales at Sainsbury's, and the retailer says that it hopes the new service will accelerate growth in this area.
"We know that customers are increasingly shopping for clothes online and that they love the convenience of being able to collect them from a store," said Mike Coupe, group chief executive of Sainsbury's.
"When we bought Argos we always knew that we wanted to enable customers to buy Tu clothing from Argos so this is a major milestone for us. We hope Argos customers embrace the Tu range in the way that Sainsbury’s customers have over the past ten years.”
Merchandise Expansion
Sainsbury's acquired Home Retail Group, the owner of Argos and Habitat, for £1.4 billion in September 2016, and began installing new concession stores in its supermarkets.
The retailer opened its 200th Argos store in a Sainsbury's supermarket this week, with a new branch in Pimlico, London, and aims to have 250 Argos outlets in its supermarkets by March 2019.
However, performance in this business has been mixed.
Although Sainsbury's posted a strong set of results in its most recent quarter, with grocery sales increasing by 2.3%, revenue in its general merchandise division, which includes Argos and Habitat, dropped by 1.4%.
Sainsbury's is currently the second largest grocer in the UK, with 16.2% market share, according to the latest figures from Kantar Worldpanel, while Argos.co.uk is the third most visited retail website in the UK, with 60% of sales originating online.
© 2018 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Sarah Harford. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
