Sainsbury’s is set to start selling its Tu fashion range at catalogue retailer Argos, making it available for next day home delivery.
The UK’s second-largest grocer, which acquired Argos as part of Home Retail Group in 2016 alongside Habitat, has announced that its flagship and own-brand clothing line will be available to buy at Argos from April 25.
Taking a cue from many leading fashion retailers, returns on the 1100 Tu items ordered from Argos’ site – now the third most visited retail site in the country – will be free.
“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,” Sainsbury’s chief executive Mike Coupe said.
“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.”
In other news, Coupe has publicly reasserted his warnings that the effect Brexit will have on Sainsbury’s, which imports 30 per cent of its goods, and on the wider UK retail market.
“Anything other than a customs union means that there is going to be some kind of delay, some kind of checking mechanism at borders,” he told a media gathering during a tour of Sainsbury’s new Redhill store.
“That either means that it adds cost to the supply chains that we run, or it means that the products we sell will be less fresh because they have to sit at ports.
“As far as I can see there is no solution which is better than the customs union and anything other than the customs union is a compromise, as far as the food supply chains that we operate are concerned.
“If there was a hard Brexit and somehow the drawbridge was pulled up, it wouldn’t take long before there were literally thousands of lorries parked on either side of the Channel.
“Given what we saw during the snow – it takes about three or four days for food supply chains to become disrupted – it would clearly be a big issue.”
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