£4m deal for Discount Dragon adds fire to e-commerce ambitions

The owner of Leigh-based Discount Dragon has been acquired in a £4m deal that seeks to create a portfolio of e-commerce brands.

The Huddled Group was launched in 2020 and Discount Dragon is its trading business, which sells branded dry and tinned groceries, and beverages at a big discount to supermarkets.

It does this by taking surplus and mis-packaged stock, and items close to their best before date.

Let’s Explore Group, which was known as Immotion Group until March, has bought the company and will shortly change its own name to Huddled Group.

The deal is for an initial £3.45m, with a deferred payment of £500,000 in April 2025. Both payments will be made in shares in Let’s Explore.

Let’s Explore plans to invest heavily in scaling Discount Dragon’s marketing activity, along with deepening the product offering.

It also expects to make investments in the warehouse “which will be needed in time”, and next year is looking to find a new warehouse facility that will allow it to grow and to operate more efficiently on a 24/7 basis.