Consumer goods group acquires Salter domain name following 2021 takeover
Oldham consumer goods group, Ultimate Products, has acquired the domain name, Salter.com, of the UK’s oldest houseware brand, Salter, which was established in 1760.
The domain name will take the place of Salterhousewares.co.uk, as the Salter brand’s direct to consumer (DTC) ecommerce channel.
It is expected that the change of domain name, which will be operated by Ultimate Products staff, will benefit from being easier to remember, type and share, as well as ranking higher from an SEO perspective.
The company also expects to complete an overhaul of Beldray.com soon, the DTC channel of Beldray, its laundry, floorcare, heating and cooling brand, also one of the UK’s oldest houseware brands, having been founded in 1872.
The new Beldray web website will be live in August and, as part of this planned improvement, has undergone wide-ranging design and user experience enhancements by the group’s website and design team.
Ultimate Products operates DTC websites for all of its owned premier brands, and said it is pleased with the growing popularity of these channels which, supported by SEO optimisation and advertising, are seeing an increasing number of visitors.
Online purchases account for 27% of non-food retail sales in the UK, and are expected to reach nearly 50% by 2025.
However, online channels made up just 15.1% of Ultimate Products’ overall revenue in financial year 2021. Increasing the share of revenue derived from online channels, therefore, presents a clear growth opportunity for Ultimate Products, which expects such channels to account for 30% of overall revenue in the medium term.
As well as owned DTC channels, the group’s online revenues also include sales generated on third party multibrand platforms such as Amazon and eBay, which are the biggest contributors to this segment.
Simon Showman, Ultimate Products chief executive, said: “Our direct-to-consumer channels are a lesser known part of our business, but demonstrate the range of skills across the Ultimate Products team.
“From website design all the way through to order fulfilment, our in-house talent has the capability to build and operate fully functioning ecommerce sites, which are visited by hundreds of thousands of customers every year.”
He added: “Despite already being a clear market leader, we have high hopes that the Salter brand can continue to grow healthily, particularly in international markets, which will be helped by this recent website acquisition.
“It is through this kind of innovation and agility that our suite of brands continues to grow and take market share. Combined with the huge audiences on global platforms such as Amazon and eBay, we are confident that we can achieve our medium term target for online channels to account for nearly a third of our total revenues.”
Ultimate Products completed its £34m acquisition of Salter Brands from FKA Brands in July2021.
Included in the acquisition were Salter’s range of high precision kitchen scales, timers and thermometers that it has developed in partnership with the renowned British chef Heston Blumenthal.
The deal involved a share placing and an offer for subscription through the Primary Bid platform to raise £15m towards the acquisition.
The company also entered into a new additional £10m conditional term loan agreement with HSBC to part finance the initial consideration of £32m in the deal.
Since 2011, Ultimate Products had licensed the Salter brand for the sale of kitchen electrical and cookware products, excluding Salter scales, with the current licence due to expire in 2024. The acquisition eliminated royalty payments and risk around the current Salter licence.
