Dabs.com

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Dabs.com

Type	Subsidiary of BT Group
Founded	1990
Headquarters	Bolton, United Kingdom
Industry	Retail
Revenue	£180m (2005)
Employees	200
Website	www.dabs.com

dabs.com is an e-commerce retailer in the United Kingdom. It is one of the UK's largest internet retailers of IT and technology products. Dabs.com was founded in Bolton by David Atherton in 1990, and has subsequently grown to employ more than 200 people, with an annual revenue of £180m.

In April 2006, it was announced that BT Group had purchased Dabs.com for an estimated £30m and that the business is now a wholly owned subsidiary of BT.

[edit] History of Dabs

Dabs Press was founded in 1987 by Dave Atherton and Bruce Smith, their initials being used to create the name Dabs. Dabs Press originally wrote manuals for computers. By 1990 Dave and Bruce wanted to move into different areas and went their separate ways, with Bruce leaving the company and at this point Dave changed the name of the company to Dabs Direct. During the time in publishing, they had increasingly been asked for advice on PCs and sourcing and Dave decided to move into this market and commenced selling IT products by mail order. In 2000, Dabs started to sell over the internet, which proved very successful as Dabs was already selling via mail order and had the infrastructure it required to transact over the internet. This coincided with another name change and the company became dabs.com plc. Although many .com companies were going from boom to bust, Dabs, originally being a mail order company, was built on solid foundations, continuing to go from strength to strength, and is often referred to as a bricks and clicks company. At the end of April 2006 David sold the Company to BT and it is now a wholly owned subsidiary of BT.

Dabs also operated in France, but the french store (dabs.fr) was closed at the end of May 2006.