The homeware retail chain The Range has struck a multimillion-pound deal to buy the Wilko brand as administrators sell off the remnants of the 93-year-old retailer.
PricewaterhouseCoopers has been selling off parts of Wilko, founded in 1930 by JK Wilkinson in Leicester, after the chain went into administration last month, putting more than 12,000 jobs at risk.
The Range, which operates 210 stores in the UK and Ireland, has acquired the Wilko brand and intellectual property rights but has not bought any of its stores. Sky reported the deal to be worth £5m.
On Tuesday, Poundland, owned by Pepco, struck a deal to acquire up to 71 Wilko sites that it intends to reopen under its own brand in a deal that could throw a lifeline to some of the 1,800 staff connected with those outlets who are at risk of losing their jobs.
PwC indicated Wilko employees would be offered the opportunity to work at the new Poundland branches, although it is not clear how many roles will be available.
Last week, PwC announced a £13m agreement with the discount retailer B&M to buy up to 51 Wilko properties that will also be rebranded, but the deal did not include a jobs guarantee.
The Pepco and B&M deals involve shops that employ 3,200 Wilko staff.
On Monday PwC said all of Wilko’s 408 stores would close by early October, with the loss of more than 12,000 jobs, after talks with potential buyers failed to produce a rescue deal.
Wilko’s two big warehouses, in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, and Newport, Wales, where 299 jobs have already gone, will close on Friday.
Last week, PwC announced the closure of a first wave of 52 Wilko stores and the loss of more than 1,300 jobs, including support centre workers and warehouse staff, but continued talks with prospective buyers.
The statement on the closure of the whole estate was made hours after it emerged that a rescue deal proposed by the owner of HMV, that would have saved about half of Wilko’s sites and secured the future of thousands of jobs, had collapsed.
Doug Putman, who engineered a turnaround of HMV in the UK and owns Toys R Us in Canada, had been negotiating to save as many as 200 Wilko stores.
