Woolworths relaunched online

Littlewoods-owned Shop Direct, which already operates as an internet business, bought the rights to the famous name for an undisclosed amount and is set to begin trading again as Woolworths.co.uk. Littlewoods owners Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay are thought to have shelled out around £10m for the rights to the brand and chief executive Mark Newton is confident of the new launch's success.

Yesterday he said "The areas of retailing that we are in – kids' clothing, confectionery, toys, entertainment – is worth about £2.5bn a year, and it is growing online at a rate of about 20pc. I am confident that with Woolworths' brand name we can flourish."

The website will offer Ladybird clothes, sold off at the same time as the brand name, pick'n'mix sweets – now known as 'click'n'mix' - and CDs and DVDs. It did not give details of expected sales or earnings, but said it would make a profit as soon as its first year of trading.

Littlwoods Online is already one of the UK's biggest web-based retailers – itself one of the fastest-growth consumer areas - and it is thought as many as 20,000 customers have signed up to the new venture. Over half a million items will be sold on the company's site as Woolworths throws down the gauntlet to the likes of Amazon and HMV.

WHAT THEY ARE SAYING:Richard Perks, retail analyst at Mintel, in the Daily Telegraph: "I think it was a clever purchase by Shop Direct. It will cost them very little to repackage the goods they were selling already, and distribute them through the Woolworths website, and there is a lot of goodwill for the Woolies brand name."

Andrew Hill, in the FT: "The problem with Woolworths was not that it couldn't satisfy those [purchase] impulses, but that they didn't occur frequently enough to sustain its business. What's more, the kind of purchases we used to make - sweets, wrapping paper, cheap toys - weren't worth spending time online for. Good luck, New Woolies, but nostalgia alone won't get the nation clicking." ·