A winding up petition was issued against the company by their landlord on 1st August 2025[2] and the company was acquired out of administration by Frasers Group on 13 August 2025.[3][4][5]
Frasers Group appear to show no interest in the Ebuyer brand or trying to recover its' previous reputation as a one-stop-shop of PC components and services, as the current range of products available on the website is not sufficient to build a complete PC.
History
Ebuyer was founded in March 2000 in Sheffield by Paul Cusack, Mike Naylor, Steve Kay, Neeraj Patel, and Adam Ashmore – with startup capital of £250,000 from Cusack, its annual turnover was in excess of £220 million by September 2005.[6] Stuart Carlisle was its managing director (CEO) from 2014 until resigning in 2015.[7] Paul Cusack resigned in December 2006.
Ebuyer (UK) Limited was owned by The West Retail Group from 2004 to 2023. West Retail is also the parent company of Wren Kitchens and the ultimate controlling party is Malcolm Healey.[8]
In April 2023, Ebuyer was reported to have been purchased from The West Retail Group by investor Mark Reed and Richard Marsden via Realtime Holdings Limited. Richard Marsden was appointed the CEO.[9][10]
The financial results posted on 3rd May 2024 on Companies House show that Ebuyer (UK) Ltd turnover for 2023 (Year Ended 31 December 2023) was £136.5m with a profit before tax of (£1.7m) (Actual loss for the year). The prior year revenue was £174.25m with a profit before tax of £109k.
The company was issued with a winding up petition by their landlord on 1st August 2025.[2] Whilst there has been no official statement from the company, considerable media coverage has ensued with reports that staff were sent home early on 6th August 2025.[11][12]
On 28 November 2025, former CEO of Ebuyer, Richard Marsden wrote on LinkedIn[citation needed] how tough the previous couple of months had been for him and Ebuyer, suggesting the issues Ebuyer faced were down to not being able to acquire sufficient volumes of stock. He expressed his appreciation for certain Frasers Group staff in saving the brand. He mentions key to moving on from the failure, of which he said the process was brutal, was to merely accept it. What Richard failed to mention were any of the previous staff he discarded like trash when he placed the company into administration. Amongst those staff members were people with up to 20 years service within Ebuyer, and were physically paramount in keeping the company systems running to allow trading to continue. In typical CEO-selfishness, there were no thanks or thoughts for any of these people.
Security
In July 2008, Gavin Brent, from Holywell in Flintshire, North Wales admitted stealing goods worth £20,000 from the firm before returning the goods, and demanding full refunds.[13] Brent, whose suspicious transactions were spotted by Ebuyer's security team, went on to conduct an online campaign against the company and the investigation. This included menacing Ebuyer staff and a police officer from Brent's now-defunct blog.[14]
During 2005 Ebuyer had significant customer service problems. Sheffield Trading Standards received 282 complaints about the company, and the customer service phone number had been removed from its website. After this, the firm promised to improve its service, and restored the customer service number to its site. Average daily telephone wait times are published. [16]
On 28 November 2011, Ebuyer ran a £1 promotion via email, offering new deals on the hour until midnight. Ebuyer angered customers when their website was unable to handle the extra traffic, causing it to crash.[17] When the website did work, many customers were emailed after successfully ordering and paying for items, only to be told they were out of stock. Many customers vented their anger at the company on their Facebook page, however Ebuyer ran a campaign on their customer forums in an attempt to counter the bad publicity.
In December 2013, Ebuyer posted pictures to Facebook of its staff wearing Christmas themed jumpers. However, a Facebook user named Phil spotted that one of the images contained a leaderboard in the background that suggested that Ebuyer staff were rated on the number of returns that they reject. Ebuyer responded to these accusations by stating that these were return merchandise authorizations avoided by providing technical advice.[18]
On 11 August 2025, Ebuyer held a meeting over Microsoft Teams with approximately 45 staff members who were all told that from that moment they were no longer employed by Ebuyer and were made redundant. CEO Richard Marsden assured those people that there would be no rush to collect any belongings from the Ebuyer office, that personal references from him would be available, and that staff would be supported through the following weeks.
In reality all staff were immediately abandoned. Emails went unanswered for days or were fobbed-off to be told to contact the administrators FRP Advisory. Staff were told bluntly that they had until 4pm on 13th August to collect any personal belongings or they would be binned. Frasers Group sent staff into the Ebuyer office to tag any assets of value and also collect items such as high-end monitors and other peripherals they could use themselves. However some of items taken were actually owned by staff members.
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