Trends at Homebase: online, Habitat and Argos

In the first six months of its current financial year (March to August), Homebase increased its online sales by 43 per cent. Sales via the Internet accounted for roughly ten per cent of the British DIY chain’s overall sales during this period.
A sharp increase in sales of more than 30 per cent was also recorded for the Habitat interior décor brand. This now has 68 shop-in-shop concessions in Homebase stores, compared with 35 at the end of the fiscal year in February. Another subsidiary of the Home Retail Group, the catalogue store Argos, has recently opened 76 small online ordering facilities in Homebase stores. This brings the number of such facilities to 96 in Homebase.