News roundup--new chief at Premier Farnell, Pixmania launches jewellery collection, more

Harriet Green, chief executive at Premier Farnell since 2006, is joining travel company Thomas Cook as chief executive at the end of July, succeeding Sam Weihagen. Laurence Bain takes over from Green as chief executive of Premier Farnell, effective 12th June. Bain joined the business in 2002 as chief operating officer.

Seven former directors of Farepak, Sir Clive Thompson, Neil Gillis, Michael Johns, Paul Munn, Stevan Fowler, William Rollason and Nicholas Gilodi-Johnson, have begun High Court proceedings with the Insolvency Service, which wants to ban them from being company directors following the collapse of the Christmas hamper savings club, writes the Financial Times. 

Delivering its financial results for the financial year to 31st March, RS Components owner Electrocomponents announced a 7 percent rise in revenues from £1.18 billion to £1.27 billion. Pretax profit was also up 7 percent, from £114 million to £122.3 million. The UK division performed well with a sales growth of 3 percent, but the real bright spot was international, were revenues were up 9 percent—contributing to more than 70 percent of group sales.

Marking its first foray into own-brand products, Dixons-owned Pixmania.com has launched a collection of jewellery named Rose & Kara. The move is part of the pan-European etailer’s continued expansion, which saw its product range grow to encompass watches and sporting goods last year. In total, Pixmania now stocks 20 different product categories.

Nick Robertson and six other Asos directors have been awarded £66 million in a share incentive programme, writes the Telegraph.

Nursery products etailer Kiddicare has seen online sales grow 20 percent in a four month period thanks to adding IBM analytics software to its existing IBM ecommerce infrastructure. Using the software to mine the large volume of data it collects and analyse customer behaviour, Kiddicare was able identify new sources of revenue, create appropriate customer incentive initiatives and put in place more effective marketing and communications strategies. After just four months, the basket value analysis showed an increase of almost 50 percent in the number of items per order.