City round-up: Sosandar; Northcoders

Cheshire-based women’s fashion retailer, Sosandar, is expanding into homeware and has signed a licensing agreement with high street retailer, NEXT. 

Following the success of Sosandar’s clothing range sold through NEXT, the group is extending its partnership to licensing the Sosandar brand to develop a homeware range.

NEXT is one of the largest homeware retailers in the UK and the licensing deal will combine NEXT’s sourcing and quality expertise with Sosandar’s design inspiration. The range will include a full set of living room furniture and accessories, including sofas, accent chairs, rugs and lighting. It will be sold online exclusively at NEXT.co.uk and expects to launch in autumn 2025.

This licensing agreement, which requires no capital expenditure for the company, is part of Sosandar’s ongoing strategy to leverage its strong and growing brand awareness, with a focus on further broadening its reach and continuing to drive brand equity.

Ali Hall and Julie Lavington, Sosandar’s co-CEOs, said: “It is a proud moment for the Sosandar brand to be licensing through NEXT, a testament to the strength of what we have built.

“This is a fantastic opportunity to leverage our brand equity and extend the success Sosandar has had through third party partnerships with little risk and no capital expenditure.

“We will combine NEXT’s specialist technical and sourcing skills with our design aesthetic and understanding of Sosandar customers to deliver an exciting and unique product range.

“Importantly, the homeware range will broaden our reach into new audiences and enable existing customers to deepen their affinity to our brand.”

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Amul Batra

Northcoders, the Manchester-based coding specialist with bases in Birmingham, Newcastle and Leeds, said today (November 5) its consultancy brand, Counter, has been accepted onto the G-Cloud 14 framework, the Government’s public sector digital marketplace.

This significant achievement broadens Counter’s reach, simplifying how public sector organisations access Counter’s expertise and solutions.

With this framework inclusion, Counter will be able to provide government departments, local councils, charities, and other public bodies with secure and scalable consultancy services.

The G-Cloud 14 framework, which is one of the broadest offering access across multiple governmental departments, streamlines procurement, helping these organisations efficiently access Counter’s technology services and gain the critical support needed to address the significant digital skills gap in public services and meet transformation aspirations over the coming years.

Counter’s acceptance aligns with Northcoders’ mission to drive innovation and operational efficiency across the public sector, in particular adhering to the rigorous security, compliance, and data protection standards required by G-Cloud 14.

This milestone underscores Counter’s commitment to delivering robust, adaptable solutions that support essential public sector projects.

Amul Batra, MD of Counter, said: “This development opens up new opportunities for us to deliver high impact consultancy services to public sector organisations across the UK.

“By being part of this framework, we can support public bodies in accessing and implementing the innovative solutions they need to drive progress and resilience in today’s digital landscape.”

Chris Hill, Northcoders CEO, said: “As a publicly listed company, we are confident that our training and technology solutions are delivered with optimum quality, security and rigour and, therefore, make us ideally placed to support government bodies in their digital transformation projects.

“As outlined by the new Labour government, productivity must improve for the UK economy to grow, and the role that technology will play in this has been outlined repeatedly as part of this journey.

“We look forward to building on the early success of Counter and are confident that it can be an exciting new revenue stream for the group.”