Ideal acquires GardenBargains

TV-shopping business Ideal Shopping Direct is to buy plants and garden-equipment retailer Lead the Good Life (LTGL) for £5 million. LTGL, which operates GardenBargains.com, was founded by Ideal’s nonexecutive chairman Paul Wright and nonexecutive director Valerie Kaye along with Peter McDermott in February 2008. Following completion of the acquisition, McDermott will stay with the business as a director of LTGL. In a statement, Ideal Shopping Direct said that the acquired business “complements the seasonality of Christmas trading” and is a step toward multichannel retailing with less reliance on 
TV shopping. In its first period of trading—the 17 months to 30th June 2009—audited accounts show LTGL made a pretax profit of £730,447 on turnover of £5.8 million.