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By Ron Coates, 5 February 2001 18:00

NEWS Last year, John Lewis bought a 40 per cent stake in Last Mile Solutions for £35m to develop an online food operation for Waitrose. The Buy.com deal is being touted by analysts as part of the rapidly growing trend in the UK of traditional bricks and mortar outfits acquiring the ideas of new economy clicks companies. The UK business of Buy.com was put up for sale after its US parent ran into troubles in the US and cancelled plans to open on the continent. It is also selling or closing its Canadian and Australian operations. No price is likely to be given as Buy.com UK was held in a complex web as a joint venture between Buy.com and eVentures, a subsidiary of ePartners, which is jointly owned by Softbank and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. According to some commentators, Buy.com UK, with 70,000 repeat buyers, 3,000 being added weekly, and its successful push into the SME market, was trading profitably. John Lewis, with 25 stores nationwide and a further 136 Waitrose supermarkets in the South, makes a point of the fact that Buy.com was the fourth most-visited site in the UK in December, with 550,000 unique visitors. Matthew Peacock, managing director of end-to-end ecommerce consultants iForce, said: "It's the best of the old and the best of the new - new world brains and old world brands. John Lewis has a fabulous brand and Buy.com has a very well thought-of management - a very capable team. "Of 16 ecommerce companies we've set up from front to back end, only two are pure dot-coms. A year ago, the proportion would have been reversed. I think that the dot-com malaise is ending and the dust is beginning to settle. This is one of the ways forward." But the way ahead for the companies is not necessarily smooth. Jacquie Hendriks, analyst at the Gartner Group, said: "We see a lot more alliances and acquisitions. The dot-coms have a good business strategy, but the trouble is that it is very expensive to get off the ground. "Buy.com sells mostly computers and ancillaries and is moving into other fields. Surveys show that these are the type of things, along with books and CDs, that sell best on the net. Moving to selling John Lewis' staples of clothes and furniture will be a challenge."