Better Bathrooms linked with £100m sale

BETTER Bathrooms, the North West online and high street retailer founded by award winning entrepreneur and former eBay trader Colin Stevens, is being linked with a £100m sale to FTSE 100 building materials group Wolseley.

According to the Sunday Telegraph Wolseley is keen on making a return to the high street, four years after selling Bathstore, its own bathroom business for £15m, on the grounds it was non-core to its heating and pumbing distribution activities.

Wigan-based Better Bathrooms sold a minority stake to the Business Growth Fund last year and has reportedly engaged DC Advisory, the corporate finance house, to field interest from potential suitors.

Bidders for Better Bathrooms are said to have been lured by its impressive sales growth and popular website. The company’s sales, split equally between its shops and online, have jumped from just £1m in 2007 to £31.1m last year. Pre-tax profits were £4m.

Last week it announced the opening of its first store in Yorkshire and a distribution centre in Oxfordshire .

The business now employs 200 staff and has sites in Wigan, Warrington, Manchester, Leicester, York and Slough and is planning to move further south and have 25 showrooms within three to five years. Mr Stevens reportedly has ambitions for the Better Bathrooms brand to be as big as B&Q.

The BGF injected £10m in return for a 30% stake and Paul Gilbert, the non-executive chairman of The Gym Group and former managing director of Matalan, joined as chairman.

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