THE Peterborough-based online retailer Kiddicare has been bought by supermarket giant Morrisons for £70million.

Food and grocery retailer Wm Morrison Supermarkets Plc announced on Tuesday February 15 that it had acquired Kiddicare, together with the rights to its highly regarded technology platform. Experts see this as the first step in Morrisons developing an online business.

Kiddicare will continue to trade separately as kiddicare.com, led by founders Scott (pictured above left) and Elaine Weavers-Wright. Morrisons will start to develop its online non-food business, developing the kiddicare.com platform and management team and launching its first products in 2012.

Dalton Philips, chief executive of Morrisons said, “This acquisition brings not only a respected, successful and fast growing specialist retailer into the Morrisons group but also a robust, scalable and highly advanced technology platform around which we can begin to build our e-commerce offer.”