Jungle.com goes in the GUS net

By SARAH MARKS FOR MAILONLINE
Updated:

 

Birmingham-based Jungle.com founder Steve Bennett has surrendered his commercial independence with the sale of his company to Great Universal Stores for £37m. The deal will help GUS-owned Argos to establish itself as a major retailer of computers and computer paraphernalia, and boost its fledgling online presence.

Argos chief executive Terry Duddy said the catalogue currently devotes only two pages to PCs and a further three to PC consumables. At present just half of one% of Argos sales are through the internet.

Jungle.com will continue as a separate brand within the Argos group and will also carry some of Argos' personal finance products.

Duddy said: 'Jungle.com is in a high growth area and we believe we can help grow it by adding goods from Argos while our greater size will enable us to do better deals on the purchasing front.' Jungle.com has become one of the better-known names in the online shopping world with 370,000 registered customers and sales of £75m in the last year.

Multi-millionaire Bennett, who boasts of his reputation as a 'serial entrepreneur', said he was ready to settle down - he said he had signed a four-year contract with Argos, and his bachelor days will soon be over - he is to marry soon.

Other senior Jungle.com managers have agreed to stay with him for two years. The deal will net Bennett a further £7m to add to his fortunes, a consideration he said was unimportant. 'I don't do it for the money, I do it because I like building businesses. I've already got a huge pile of cash,' said Bennett, who recently published a book called Serve to Win.

However, most of his 500 employees, for whom money may matter, will benefit from the sale. About £4m will be distributed between the management team and the team members. 'We don't call them employees,' said Bennett, who claims to have one of the lowest staff turnovers in the industry. He did not disclose what a junior Jungle.commer might receive.

Bennett, who was backed by venture capit group 3i when he launched the site in August 1999, had hoped to float the business but changing market sentiment sent the talked-about £750m valuation of his business plunging.

Rival retailers such as Dixons and Kingfisher are thought to have been interested in the group, which lost £11.4m last year, but Bennett said he liked the GUS people. 'I don't know what it used to be like, but GUS today is a very entrepreneurial company,' he said.

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