After reclaiming its position as Britain‘s biggest music retailer earlier this year, overtaking Amazon, HMV is poised to launch a website in coming weeks that will enable customers the ability to buy CDs and games online for the first time. The entertainment company‘s move to e-commerce comes two years after it collapsed.
HMV went into administration with £170m of debts in 2013, posing the threat of 223 shops‘ closure and the loss of over 4,000 jobs. Within three months however, restructuring experts at Hilco saved the business and 140 stores from drowning.
Since then Hilco‘s management team has led a major overhaul that has seen HMV return to profit and unveil plans to open six more stores in the UK and 10 in Ireland.
The company trialled a pilot in Ireland last year, but until now the UK site has been run in the style of a music blog as part of HMV‘s attempts to connect with music fans via editorial content. “We are careful that we don‘t want to overcook it but there is a large potential for the UK website to lift the business,” Paul McGowan, CEO at Hilco told The Telegraph.
