Tyneside shopping-at-work retailer Premier Direct Group (PDG) yesterday announced the acquisition of cosmetics business Oriflame UK.
The company is based in South Shields, South Tyneside, and sells books, toys and novelties at workplaces. It bought the loss-making UK subsidiary from Swedish group Oriflame Cosmetics.
Oriflame UK has been in the red for the past 12 years, mainly because of difficulties recruiting consultants. In the year to December 2005, the business reported a turnover of £3.2m and a pretax loss of £1.7m.
PDG has been running the operations of Oriflame UK under a management contract since January and, in the past four months, business has generated a small operating profit.
In February, PDG moved Oriflame's operations in Milton Keynes to its head office in South Shields, creating about 12 jobs.
Oriflame UK employs 2,500 sales consultants and cosmetics are sold at parties, home demonstrations and through a catalogue.
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