Do It All Essay

Let’s deal with Focus first. The company had its origins back in the early 1980's when somebody called Mike Williams launched Focus Homecentres. In 1987 the Choice Group Limited acquired the company. With a mix of natural growth and acquisitions the company grew, eventually purchasing the Do It All DIY chain from Boots in 1998. Both chains were re-branded "Focus Do It All".
As for Do It All, they were roughly the same age as Focus DIY - created in 1979 by WH Smith in the days when most big high street retailers seemed to either own or have their fingers in some kind of DIY pie.
Do It All never really enjoyed much success, just years after it's creation in the 1980's it faced fierce competition, and in 1990 it merged with Payless DIY – owned by Boots. Both Boots and WH Smith held a 50/50 share, and set about a bit of re-branding, which achieved nothing. In 1996 WH Smith sold their 50% share to Boots for the huge sum of a £1 gift voucher.
Unsurprisingly in 1998, Boots sold the 139 Do It All stores to Focus DIY – and as mentioned above, both chains were re-branded “Focus Do It All”. Even that didn’t last. In 2001 they were re-branded again to “Focus”.

So let's introduce another DIY company into the Focus mix. In steps Wickes. Actually the oldest of our little trio, Wickes was founded by Henry Dunn in1854 in the USA. But it wasn't until 1972 that the Wickes Corporation opened its first store in the UK. Where Wickes come into the equation is largely thanks to serious accounting irregularities uncovered in 1996 which saw its share price suspended. In steps a new CEO named Bill Grimsey to oversee the recovery of Wickes from this scandal. He introduced new schemes and turned the company around. Shortly after Focus bought