Mon, 18 Mar 2013 | BUSINESS SALE
Deloitte, the administrators of stricken media retail chain HMV, has received four offers to buy the Fopp brand music stores, according to reports from the Guardian.
The cut-price music chain appears to be of interest to a number of high street competitors but the administrators are unlikely to separate it from the bulk of the brand, largely due to the news that the chain's main creditor, Hilco, is close to announcing its own deal for the brand.
Hilco, which already owns the HMV Canada chain, bought the debt of the UK brand when it entered administration earlier this year. It is now thought to be planning a deal that will allow it to cherry-pick the best of the 222 HMV sites around the country and the nine Fopp stores to trade as its own.
The administrators and Hilco have already decided to sell off some of the less viable stores, such as those purchased by supermarket chain Morrisons, which is planning to convert them into convenience stores to expand its own brand. The company has also bought up Blockbuster stores with a similar plan in mind.
Trade buyers and private equity firms are thought to be behind the four bids for Fopp, but administrators declined to name the specific interested parties.
Gordon Montgomery, founder of Fopp, who now runs Rise Music in Bristol, told the Guardian that the strong level of interest in Fopp is unsurprising: “It is a great brand. If you look at the blogs everyone says HMV lost its way, but there are a lot of people who love Fopp.
“If you are of the pitch in music towns like Edinburgh, Manchester, Cambridge, Nottingham, Glasgow, you have to make yourself a destination. Fopp has a great reputation for selling music, with more left-field catalogue than HMV.”
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