British clothing, footwear and home products retailer Next has acquired homeware etailer MADE.COM. The etailer's operating subsidiary MDL (Made.com Design Ltd), has notified MADE.COM that it has now appointed Zelf Hussain, Peter David Dickens and Rachael Maria Wilkinson of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as administrators of MDL. Following their appointment, MDL acting by its administrators has entered into an agreement with Next Retail Limited to acquire the brand, domain names and intellectual property of MDL. This transaction represents the best option available to generate returns for creditors as a whole, under severely limited timescales. However, the transaction does not include staff. Consequently, this will result in 320 redundancies across the business. In addition, 79 employees who had resigned and were working on their notice have been released with immediate effect.

Close to 4,500 customer orders in the UK and Europe which are already with carriers are being delivered. However, a large proportion of customer orders are still at origin in the Far East at various stages of production. Due to the impact of the business entering administration, these items cannot be completed and shipped to customers. In this case, customers will need to submit a claim to the administration, details about how to submit a claim are available in the creditor section here.