Morrisons has bought baby goods website Kiddicare for £70m, marking the supermarket chain’s first move in building an online non-food business.
Morrisons said it would use Kiddicare’s technology platform to develop its own non-food business, with the first products due in 2012.
Kiddicare, which was founded in 1974, has more than 40,000 customers a month, and employs about 130 people.
Its turnover was £37.5m last year, with 80% of its sales made online.
The company will continue to trade separately as kiddicare.com.
Morrisons is the UK’s fourth-largest supermarket chain with 429 stores.
Morrisons chief executive Dalton Philips said: “This acquisition brings not only a respected, successful and fast growing specialist retailer into the Morrisons group but also a robust, scalable and highly advanced technology platform around which we can begin to build our e-commerce offer.”
