Administrators at WILKO have agreed to sell the retailer’s brand to The Range in a deal worth £5m, according to sources.
This morning, The Sun exclusively revealed that The Range owner Chris Dawson is close to reaching a deal with administrators at PwC, and that the announcement will come today.
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Wilko administrators have agreed to sell the retailer’s brand The RangeCredit: Alamy
The Range wants to sell Wilko brand merchandise in its discount stores and potentially keep the website.
However, his retail empire consists exclusively of retail parks and Mr Dawson was not interested in taking over Wilko’s stores.
Administrators are expected to make an announcement immediately confirming the sale.
The Wilko name will disappear from the high street by the end of the month as administrators pull down the shutters for the last time.
Poundland yesterday struck a deal to buy 71 stores from Wilko and said former workers would be first in line for the new jobs.
Poundland said it wanted to rebrand stores and prepare them for Christmas trading.
Chief executive Barry Williams said: “Over the coming weeks we will be working quickly with landlords to enable us to open these stores as Poundlands with the new range which is key to our recent growth.
“And once that process is complete, we will ensure that a significant number of Wilko colleagues join our Poundland team.”
Administrators at PwC are now dividing up Wilko’s estate after a deal to sell the entire chain to HMV owner Doug Putman collapsed this weekend.
They have already closed 52 stores and sold 51 stores to B&M Bargains for £13m last week.
Poundland and B&M will reopen the stores they bought under their own names.
B&M’s store locations will be announced alongside the half-year financial results on November 9.
All Wilko stores will close for good by October, administrators announced on Monday.
The first 52 closures began yesterday, and by the end of the day 24 stores had closed for good.
An additional 28 locations will close on Thursday this week, resulting in over 1,000 redundancies.
A further 124 stores will close next week in three rounds of closures on Sunday 17, Tuesday 19 and 21 September.
Administrators reported yesterday that deadlines for the remaining 222 closures will be announced soon.
All of the stores are expected to close in the coming weeks, putting a further 9,100 employees out of a job at those stores.
Wilk’s warehouses in Worksop and Newport are also due to close on September 15 and most of the remaining 886 employees will be made redundant on that date.
The first wave of job cuts took place early last week, with a total of 269 support center team member roles axed on the Worksop website.
A further 14 jobs at Kin Limited, a subsidiary of Wilka, were also cut after it also fell into administration.
Wilko fell into administration back in August after failing to find new backers for the business.
Meanwhile, we reveal the full list of Wilko stores that Poundland has bought.
Plus, here’s the full list of 124 stores slated to close next week and 52 that will close their doors in the coming days.
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