Arcadia zooms onto the Net

NEWS Arcadia Group, which owns several UK retail chains including Top Shop, Burtons and Dorothy Perkins, is to launch an ecommerce portal and Internet service provider (ISP). The service, called Zoom, will offer news from Associated Newspapers, online dating and a job search facility. It will also include a loyalty card and a credit card. Zoom MD, Eva Pascoe, said: "We are an online shopping centre and a portal, too. Apart from Arcadia brands, we are signing up other partners such as Red or Dead." Pascoe added that she chose Easynet to provide ISP services because it has a good presence in France and Germany - the next two countries to be targeted by Zoom. Zoom will also offer some product lines not available anywhere else - first of which will be a special range of Wonderbras. For more information, see http://www.zoom.co.uk