The retail store chain Zavvi, which began shuttering high street music stores and turned off its e-commerce site in December, is to live on as an online-only retailers after the brand was bought by Cheshire-based e-tail company The Hut Group. And, as if by magic, Zavvi.co.uk is back online and offering a 10-percent-off “bounce back” sale. Hut Group also runs music and DVD site the Hut.com and provides white-label online retail platforms for Asda, WH Smith, Phones 4U and LoveFilm. Up to 100 jobs will be created in the next year based at Hut Group’s Northwich office, doubling its staff.
It’s a victory for digital distribution over physical — the collapse of Woolworths-owned CD wholesaler Entertainment UK left retailers including Zavvi without stock during an already shaky period for high street sales and Zavvi fell into administration on Christmas Eve. But having bought the site, Hut Group will use its distribution network, which has offices in the Channel Islands, to offer not just music and DVDs but electrical goods, computers and perfumes. What appears to have not been resurrected is Zavvi’s plans for a digital download store — as late as January, a message on the site read: “Coming soon — zavvidownloads.co.uk — the brand-new download store from zavvi”, but there’s no place for downloads on the new site.
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