S&T Audio, the holding company of PMT and Dolphin Music, has announced that it is withdrawing the Dolphin Music brand,with PMT Online continuing as the company’s online offering going forward.
Dolphin was placed in administration in 2011, after running into financial difficuties. Prior to that, it had been an extremelt successful UK online sales portal. The purchase by PMT soon followed as the firm saw it as a turnkey solution to improve its online offering, which had failed to match the success of its high street stores.
In a statement, joint CEO of S&T Audio, Simon Gilson, said: “We are delighted to announce that after over three years of planning, investment and re-structuring, we are at last able to execute the final stages of our long-term ecommerce strategy by taking this all-important leap forward.
“When we acquired Dolphin Music over six years ago, we were already well-established as the country’s leading bricks-and-mortar MI retailer. The main reason behind the Dolphin Music purchase in 2011 was to bring our online presence and IP up to speed.
“Since the acquisition, Carly Crowder (who was with Dolphin Music previously), has built the team to where it is today and has overseen many improvements, including a totally new website for PMT Online. Our intention was always to run both PMT Online and Dolphin Music as separate market offerings. However, with search engines ever-changing and updating algorithms, we found that it would be an inappropriate strategy to continue to back two horses.
“Internally, this will be a completely bloodless coup, as the whole team in Liverpool has been working towards the goal of solely improving PMT Online for a long time, with Carly remaining firmly at the head of S&T Audio’s online objectives. As always in the business, despite being 26 years old, there is always a lot going on. We are only a few weeks away from completing the roll out of our new ePOS system, which will ensure our ability to grow and innovate for years to come, both online and within our 15 PMT Stores.”
