Dabs.com

dabs.com was an e-commerce retailer in the United Kingdom. It was one of the UK's largest internet retailers of IT and technology products. From 2006 until its closure in 2016, it was a subsidiary of BT Group.^[1]

dabs.com

Company type	Subsidiary
Industry	Retail
Founded	1987; 38 years ago (1987) (offline as Dabs Press) 1990; 35 years ago (1990) (offline as Dabs Direct and eventually online as Dabs.com)
Headquarters	Bolton, England, UK
Area served	United Kingdom Republic of Ireland
Key people	Helen Slinger (CEO)
Revenue	£200m (2008)
Number of employees	200
Parent	BT Group
Website	www.dabs.com www.dabs.ie

History

As an independent company

Originally Dabs Press, from 1987 to 1990, and Dabs Direct, it primarily sold its products via advertisements in IT related magazines.^[2] dabs.com was founded in Bolton by David Atherton and Bruce Smith^[3] in 1987;^[2] Dabs is an acronym of the initials of the founders' names. It subsequently grew to employ more than 200 people, with annual revenue of £200m from 5000 transactions daily.

Dabs.com was a shirt sponsor of Fulham FC for the 2003–04 and 2004–05 seasons.^[4]

BT takeover

In April 2006, it was announced that BT Group had purchased dabs.com for an estimated £30m and that the business would become a wholly owned subsidiary of BT.^[1]

The company's operations in France were subsequently closed at the end of May 2006.^[5]

Closure

In April 2016, the dabs.com brand was retired and replaced by BT Shop for consumers and BT Business Direct for business customers.^[6][7] This included the closure of the dabs.ie website for the Republic of Ireland and the end of consumer-oriented sales there on the same date.^[8]