IK Investment Partners, formerly known as Industri Kapital, has sold Wehkamp, an internet retailer in the Netherlands, to a group of private investors.
IK Investment Partners, formerly known as Industri Kapital, has sold Wehkamp, an internet retailer in the Netherlands, to a group of private investors.
IK will retain a minority interest in Wehkamp.
It acquired Wehkamp, together with the credit management company Transfair, from the UK retailer GUS in January 2006 with the plan to further grow and develop both businesses and capitalise on IK’s experience in the home shopping, consumer credit and debt collection markets.
At the time of IK’s investment, Wehkamp’s sales were in decline, but this was turned into an average growth rate of over five per cent per annum and operating profits have doubled.
Wehkamp trades under wehkamp.nl and has been reorganised into three distinctive online stores: fashion, living and electronics.
The website has also been redesigned.
Wehkamp.nl has more than five million visitors per month including 1.3 million returning customers and completes about five million orders every year.
The financial services offering to Wehkamp’s customers and other clients have been transferred to a separate group company, Lacent. Lacent is being sold as part of this transaction.
In line with the strategy set out at the beginning of the investment Wehkamp sold Transfair, its credit management subsidiary, to Lindorff, a European credit management company in 2007.
Kristiaan Nieuwenburg, partner at IK (photo), says: ‘Wehkamp has been a very profitable investment for IK. The transformation of Wehkamp demonstrates IK’s ability to accelerate growth and implement structural operational improvements in our portfolio companies. Wehkamp is now ready for the next phase in its development.’
The investor group consists of Ad Scheepbouwer, a supervisory board member and current minority shareholder in RFS, and Wehkamp’s incumbent management team, Paul Nijhof and Berend van der Maat.
The investor group will acquire RFS Holland Holding, the holding company of Wehkamp.
