Dabs.com

dabs.com was an e-commerce retailer in the United Kingdom which was one of the country's largest online 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
Area served	United Kingdom Republic of Ireland
Key people	Helen Slinger (CEO)
Revenue	£200m (2008)
Number of employees	200
Parent	BT Group

History

Originally Dabs Press, from 1987 to 1990, then Dabs Direct, the company 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 5,000 transactions daily.

Dabs.com was a shirt sponsor of Fulham F.C. 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]