Amazon gets big in toy warehousing

Amazon has announced a 10-year deal with Toys R Us in which it will market toys and baby goods. Amazon has rarely done any deals with companies that aren't Net-based and analysts reckon the deal demonstrates that both companies are finding the online toy market hard-going.

Amazon will run the website, order fulfilment and customer service - basically making use of all that investment it has made in warehousing. Toys R Us will assume the inventory risk which is good for Amazon as it got seriously burned at Christmas with write downs of unsold toys.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO, says the company is up for deals with other retailers other sectors and is probably heading towards being a web savvy UPS style distribution business.

Carphone Warehouse and Scoot.com have struck a deal allowing the phone shop's customers to list their businesses on Scoot's directory service on a subscription basis. The flip side of the deal is that Scoot will sell its products through the Carphone Warehouse stores meaning the phone shops will act as a sales team for Scoot.

Cable operator NTL has played down speculation that it is to merge with troubled cable rival Telewest. It said this as it posted a pretax loss of $630 million (£420 million) nearly double the $348 million of the same quarter a year earlier.

The company has also revealed it has 150,000 people waiting to sign up for its unmetered internet access service. ®

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