The Success Of An Irish E-Business

The Success of an Irish eBusiness

What type of business is Homebase

Homebase sells nearly everything you would need to improve your home and garden. It is based in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland with 320 stores open throughout.Its currently the Uk’s second largest home improvement retailer.

The history of Homebase

In 1979 Homebase was founded by GB-Inno-BM (Belgian retailer) and Sainbury’s a successful supermarket chain on March 3rd 1981 the first Homebase opened in Croydon.Since then Homebase have been very succesful, in 1995 they took over Texas Homecare they began converting these stores in 1996,the last 60 were converted in 1999. In October 1999 Sainbury’s purchased the Hampden Group plc which was the franchisee of 7 Homebase stores in Northern Ireland and 3 in the Republic of Ireland.

The Homebase chain was sold in December 2000 in a deal worth Ð'Ј969 million to B&Q’s franchisee Kingfisher plc. It was then sold to Great Universal Stores plc in november 2002 for Ð'Ј900 million and was part of the Argos retail group.In 2006 Great Universal Stores plc demerged, Homebase now operates as a part of the Home Retail Group.In 2007 Home Retail Group purchased properties from Focus DIY for Ð'Ј40 million with the stores being transferred by the end of 2007 and then reffitted over the coming months also with the staff from Focus DIY transfering to Homebase.

Products and services offered by Homebase

The amount of Products sold by Homebase is vast they cover every category of products found in the home not just furniture and homeware where you can buy beds sofas chairs etc.They cover heating and cooling products such as heaters and air conditioners, nearly every type of lighting you might want to purchase and also have a great choice of flooring and tiling products.If you want to buy a pre designed bathroom or kitchen suite Homebase have many to choose from including nearly any kitchen or bathroom accesory you might want for it and of course they also stock many decorating products such as paint and wallpaper.Homebase also sell products which are slightly less home orientated such as electrical goods like plasma and LCD televisions, DVD and even Satelite navigation and power tools leads and sockets etc.They also have an outdoor section for gardening and outdoor living where they sell sheds, garden tools, conservatories bycycles and outdoor toys.

Some of the services offered by Homebase are a spend and save scheme where you can get up to 10% back in rewards by using a savers card.They offer home, travel and pet insurance.If you are a business purchasing from Homebase they offer a range of services to make buying for your business easy.Homebase offer a range of spare parts for products if a part becomes lost or broken by teaming up with the suppliers of these products, they have also teamed up with Linette Applegate to offer a customer interested in doing up there garden a choice of 160 ready made garden designs. Finally Homebase offer a tool hire in association with hire station one of the UK’s leading tool hire companies. They offer a choice of over 2000 tools to choose from.

Analysis of Homebase

The obvious target audience for this site is home owners and to a lesser extent businesses. Even by just hearing the name of the business “Homebase” most people could probably tell that it sells products associated with the home and also by use of its slogan “Making a house a home” .You also know that they do have a market for businesses as they offer business special services.

I found the website to be modern and