A&B given a lift as gold pulls in more customers
PAWNBROKER Albemarle & Bond said yesterday that heavy advertising by websites that buy gold from consumers by post has boosted business.
Revenues at its gold-buying arm were up 22 per cent in the six months to the end of December.
The firm said that that was being boosted by online advertising in the industry.
But A&B’s pre-tax profits slipped one per cent to £10.7m in the period due to the cost of opening new shops.
Chief executive Barry Stevenson said: “We are expanding the core business and exploring new opportunities including adding at least 25 full line stores per annum, opening flexible gold buying pop-up shops, developing new routes to market, trialling new unsecured lending products, introducing new marketing and branding strategies, and further incentivisation of our highly trained staff to deliver outstanding levels of service.”