AO.com, (previously Appliances Online), sells household appliances and electricals online in the UK (AO.com(, Germany (AO.de) and the Netherlands (AO.nl). The company’s headquarters are located in Bolton, Greater Manchester and it has operations across 50,000 square feet of offices. AO.com trades on the London Stock Exchange and is part of the index.

 

Appliances Online was founded in 2000 by John Roberts, as a result of a £1 bet in a pub in Bolton. A close friend of Roberts bet him £1 he couldn’t set up a company selling appliances online and disrupt the white goods market.

 

The company sold directly to consumers and also sold kitchen appliances on behalf of large retailers including Next, House of Fraser and B&Q. In order to facilitate end-to-end control Expert Logistics, a distribution company, was acquired in 2009.

 

2013 saw the rebranding of Appliances Online to AO.com, the emergence of the current logo, one million Facebook likes and the launch of their first TV advertisement.

 

In February 2014 AO World was floated on the London Stock Exchange allowing investors to trade the AO IPO. With a vision of European expansion, the IPO enabled AO.com to raise funds to progress. Later the same year AO.de was launched in Germany, the first of the company’s websites outside of the UK. In 2015 AO.com publicised plans to launch a second overseas website in the Netherlands.

 

In 2016, in support of AO.com’s European expansion, an 84,000 square metre headquarters opened in Germany. Further expansion took place in Crewe, Staffordshire, with the addition of the Omega building to its warehouse space, totalling 740,000 square feet.

 

In 2017 former COO of the company, Steve Caunce, held the position of CEO. In March 2018 AO.com made announcements that would further facilitate its growth. Firstly £50 million was raised through a share placing and secondly it was planned to open a state-of-the-art recycling plant in Telford, Shropshire. The recycling facility would have the capacity to process a fifth of the appliances thrown away in the UK annually, a total of 700,000 units.

 

In April 2018 a new office, which would house the company’s multimedia, IT and sales teams, opened in Manchester city centre. In April AO.com announced that it had received over 100,000 Trustpilot reviews, an accolade only twenty businesses across the world enjoys. In July, a new branding campaign, Delivering Tomorrow, commenced and plans were reported for a second recycling facility in the south east of England. In a bid to expand their reach beyond white goods and household appliances in 2018 AO.com acquired Mobile Phones Direct for £32.5 million.

In January 2019 AO.com announced that founder John Roberts would resume his role of CEO