Comet Electricals Limited (trading as Comet.co.uk) is a British online electricals retailer and a former electricals retail chain. The company sells consumer electronics and white goods, along with other related products and services.
The company was formed in 1933 by George Hollingbery as a business charging batteries for customers on a weekly basis. The business grew and diversified into radio rentals, and the first electricals store opened in the 1950s. Comet expanded during the 1960s and 1970s, and became a publicly listed company in 1972. In 1984, the Hollingberry family sold the business to Woolworths Group (later Kingfisher plc) in 1984, who later sold it to Kesa in July 2003. In November 2011, private equity firm OpCapita purchased Comet for a token £2 following sustained losses, later placing it into administration. The 240 stores and stock was liquidated and closed by 18 December 2012, with 6,500 staff losing their jobs.
In August 2020, after nearly eight years of dormancy, Misco revived the Comet brand as an online-only retailer. In May 2025, the Comet brand was acquired by OnBuy, with plans to return in late 2025 as an online electronics marketplace, following a £10m investment. Comet was reverted back to its pre-2010 brand.
History
Early years (1933–1958) Comet was founded in Hull in 1933 by entrepreneur George Hollingbery as Comet Battery Stores. Hollingbery had noticed the increasing popularity of the wireless radio during the 1930s and launched a service which involved himself and one other employee charging batteries in his workshop and delivering them to customers for a small weekly fee.
By 1939, the service had expanded, to around 2,500 customers and a small fleet of vans was required for the deliveries. As customer demand grew for replacement wireless sets, Hollingbery renamed the business to Comet Radio Services and began providing a radio rental service. Comet's first retail store was opened in George Street, Hull in the 1950s. Two more stores were subsequently opened in Bridlington and Driffield.
George Hollingbery died in 1958, aged 55, and his son Michael took control of the business.
Pioneering the discount warehouse (1968–69) In 1964, the Resale Prices Act was passed in the United Kingdom, rendering all resale price agreements 'against the public interest' unless proven otherwise. Minimum resale price maintenance (MRPM) had ensured that retailers such as Comet could only sell a product at a price determined by the manufacturer. The abolition of MRPM allowed Comet to make the transition from a small electrical retail chain in Yorkshire to a national discount retailer. In 1968, Comet opened its first out-of-town retail store in Hull, offering a range of 50 radio and television products.
Alan Sugar, the founder of Amstrad, said later that the opening of this discount warehouse "changed the face of retailing." The business was predominantly mail order although members of the public were also able to purchase from the warehouse in person.
Comet placed full page advertisements in specialist magazines and newspapers, listing their stock and the prices, which were between 15% and 45% lower than the manufacturers' recommended retail prices. One such advertisement in The Yorkshire Post resulted in customers "queueing around the block." Sugar said: "This form of retailing signalled the demise of the small electrical shop on the street corner, which simply couldn't compete."
Initially, Comet was the only major retailer offering electrical equipment at heavily discounted prices, and the largest share of its business remained mail order. When competitors such as the G. W. Smith and Laskys chains also began to offer discounted equipment, Comet was compelled to begin opening its own branches nationwide. Comet eventually purchased the Laskys chain outright for £8.9 million in 1989.
In 1969, a second discount warehouse was opened in Leeds, and the company was renamed Comet Radiovision Services.
Expansion and flotation (1971–1973) Between February 1971 and July 1972, another seven discount warehouses were opened, including outlets in Edinburgh and Birmingham. A further nine warehouses were expected to be operational by May 1973. Total sales from their warehouses rose from £308,000 from 1968 to 1969, to £5.3 million from 1970 to 1971.
Despite the success of its out-of-town warehouse operations, Comet continued to maintain a presence on the high street, assisted by the consumer boom of the early 1970s ("the Barber Boom"), the introduction of hire purchase facilities, and the growth in the purchase and rental of colour television sets. Comet also traded on its after-sales service, a twice-weekly nationwide delivery service, and its ability to undercut most competitors by around 10%. Goods were sold with 12 months' free service, including parts and labour, and Comet guaranteed that it would beat "any genuine advertised price" for brand new items.
In July 1972, Comet went public with an initial offering of 4.7 million shares at 110p. Michael Hollingbery revealed that inheritance tax had been one of the reasons for the flotation, saying: "If a death had occurred in the family we could have lost control or faced considerable financial problems."
By November 1973, Comet had established 25 discount warehouses in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Grimsby, Hull, Jarrow, Leeds, Leicester, London, Norwich, Newport, Nottingham, Oxford, Reading, Rochdale, Sheffield, Southampton, Stockton-on-Tees, Sunderland, Wigan and Willenhall.
Budget booms and busts (1974–1976) The business was impacted badly in 1974 by the three-day week, tighter government controls on hire purchase and consumer credit, and the knock-on effect of a worldwide shortage of steel and plastic.
Relying on fast turnover to compensate for reduced margins (typically the company operated with only a 2% pre-tax margin), Comet was particularly vulnerable to any slump in consumer activity. Where previously it had been able to sell goods "so quickly that they are gone before the manufacturers' invoice has to be met" Comet now found itself having to dramatically revise its sales forecasts and reassess its orders.
Competition from longer-established department stores and high street multiples was also growing, as Currys opened two discount warehouses (under the trading name Bridger Discount), followed by Great Universal Stores and Rediffusion. In September 1974, the group sold its television rental business to Spectra Rentals for £1.73 million, in an effort to reduce its overall debt.
In 1975, Comet expanded its range of goods by purchasing the share capital of Gas Trend, a discount retailer of gas appliances, for £15,000. This placed Comet as the only large multiple retailer of gas appliances to compete against the nationalised British Gas Corporation which accounted for around 80% of the market.
In April 1975, the electrical retail sector underwent a mini boom, following that month's budget announcement, that electrical appliances would be subject to a 25% VAT levy beginning 1 May 1975, a substantial increase from the previous rate of 8%. Although Comet reported sales increases of up to 600% in some of its warehouses, Michael Hollingbery warned that the group would be maintaining only the minimum working stock from 1 May onwards.
Predicting an overall slump in sales of 50% he said: "[After 1 May] there will be a sales trough. What has been happening in the past week has been that people have merely brought forward the purchase they had planned to make later in the year or have realised that certain types of goods that they can afford now may be later out of their grasp." When the levy was reduced the following year to 12.5%, Comet benefited from the corresponding brisk upturn in trade, describing sales as "bumper."
Despite the fall in profits, during the 1975–1976 period, Comet continued with its expansion plans, opening new outlets across the country. By December 1976, the group had grown to 50 outlets, with plans to increase this to 100 by December 1977. In July 1976, Comet acquired the Eclipse Radio and Television Services chain from Loyds Retail, a subsidiary of Philips. Consumer fears of an emergency autumn budget and changes to the Minimum Lending Rate drove Comet's sales to 15% above predictions in late 1976.
Bids and buy-out (1981–1984) In June 1981 the Hollingbery family began to reduce its shareholdings in Comet. Valued at £51 million, the group now included 200 Comet Electrical and Timberland Do-It-Yourself outlets, a jewellery manufacturer and a supplier of Polarcold metal pressings for domestic appliance manufacturers. The family disposed of 8 million shares, raising £9.92 million. Michael Hollingbery explained: "Too much of the family wealth was concentrated in one company."
In April 1984 Harris Queensway announced that it was finalising "an agreed bid" of £152 million for the Comet group. The following day, Woolworths (then owned by Paternoster Stores, forerunner of Kingfisher) announced that it had made a £177 million counter-bid, which had been accepted. Hollingbery retained the Comet chair after the sale, which took place in May 1984.
Hostile takeover bid for Dixons (1989–1990) In December 1989, Kingfisher announced a £461 million hostile takeover bid for Dixons. Dixons had acquired Currys in 1984, and Kingfisher said that if the bid was successful it would retain both brand names along with Comet. Dixons retaliated by preparing a submission to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) stating that a merger of Comet, Currys and Dixons would create a monopoly in out-of-town retail parks.
Stanley Kalms, Dixons' chairman, said: "[This] is about a virtual monopoly in retail parks, the fastest growing sector of the business. Out-of-town there are only two competitors, Currys and Comet." Kingfisher claimed that the combined market share of Currys, Dixons and Comet would only represent 22%, below the threshold of 25% which would trigger an investigation by the Monopolies and Merger Commission (MMC), while market researchers assessed the combined share as 26%.
On 16 January 1990 Trade Secretary Nicholas Ridley announced that Kingfisher's bid had been referred to the MMC. He said that the combined market share would have been just under 25% but would have been four times larger than its nearest competitor, Rumbelows. For some products, including personal stereos, microwave ovens and dishwashers, the market share rose to between 30% and 40%.
Ridley said that in the out-of-town sector, the combined group would control 70–80% of the market. There was also concern that the combined group's buying power "would allow it to gain substantial discounts from manufacturers but the lack of competition would mean it would not be under pressure to pass discounts on to the consumer."
On 4 May 1990, the independent market research group Verdict published a report warning that the proposed merger would lead to higher prices and that the dominant position of the combined group would result in the public paying "for the strategic errors made by Britain's leading electrical retailers in the 1980s." The MMC blocked the merger in May 1990.The report had been erroneously placed on sale in government stationery offices at 9am on 23 May, a full day earlier than Ridley's expected announcement.
Traders in Dixons shares were able to take advantage for almost four hours until the Stock Exchange suspended trading in both Dixons and Kingfisher. It was decided that this did not constitute insider trading as "the report had been published, albeit in error." ()
Recession and consumer crisis (1990–1997)