Wiggle and Chain Reaction websites to be relaunched

[flying]

Wiggle and Chain Reaction websites to be relaunched by Mike Ashley's Frasers Group

"Relaunch" set to take place next week, after Frasers Group acquired the brands

I hope they also reopen sales in the USA too

Although mention at end of article suggests it wont be the same caliber of Wiggle

"I don't think Wiggle will be the same again," he said.
"I think the trends of Mike Ashley's brands… they're all sort of mega discount or entry-level kit, really affordable options.
So I imagine Wiggle will turn into that."

[Mark McM]

This has echoes of the Performance Bike/Bike Nashbar story.

Performance Bike and Nashbar were two of the largest bicycle mail order companies in the 1990s - 2010s. They then were bought out and brought under a new holding company called ASE (Advanced Sports Enterprises). But ASE was over-leveraged, and and under a ton of debt ASE declared bankruptcy and was liquidated, with all assets being sold off. Two of those assets were the rights to the brand names and web domains for "Performance Bike" and "Nashbar". A company named Amain Cycling bought the names and web domains, however they bought none of the other assets of ASE (no offices, warehouses, inventory, personnel, or anything else). A short time later, the PerformanceBike.com and Nashbar.com web sites were relaunched. Both web sites have a slightly different look to their main page, but they have the same inventory, prices, policies, etc., as Amain Cyclings original web page (AmainCyclingcom). They new web sites are basically just new front doors to Amain Cycling, and bear no relation to the original Peformance Bike or Nashbar.

So if the Wiggle/Chain Reaction situation is the same, then there will be new Wiggle and Chain Reaction web sites, but the company behind them will have no other connection at all to the original Wiggle and Chain Reaction.

[verticaldoug]

Well, it could be worse, Mike Ashley is probably a longterm bad choice, but he is not a first rate bad choice because he has not been Knighted yet. It takes a real scumbag businessman to be Knighted: i.e. see Sir Phillip Green for details.

1. LillyWhites, SportsDirect, Frasers, Debenhams and New Castle United FC are some of the businesses he has acquired and then proceeded to run poorly.
2. He's stores are/were famous for appalling treatment of workers, and he was a big user of Zero-Hour Contracts which were quite abusive to part-time workers.

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