Sit-up Ltd
 |
|
| Limited company subsidiary | |
| Traded as | Bid Shopping |
| Industry | Broadcasting |
| Fate | Administration |
| Founded | 2000 |
| Defunct | 17 April 2014 |
| Headquarters | Bid Shopping Sit-Up House 179–181 The Vale London. W3 7RW, UK |
|
Key people
|
Wendelin Mueller, Chief Executive Clive Bradshaw – Director of Information Systems Joe Barry, Director of Operations Bryan Crenol – Director of Finance |
| Products | Shopping Television Channels |
| Revenue | Unknown |
|
Number of employees
|
766 (as of 31 December 2005) |
Sit-Up Ltd., traded as Bid Shopping, was a UK-based broadcaster which launched in 2000. It operated a portfolio of falling price shopping television channels to over 12 million homes in the UK.
On 1 April 2009, it was announced that Sit-Up Ltd had been sold by Virgin Media to Aurelius AG. The purchase price or terms of the agreement have not been disclosed. Virgin Media had previously owned the company – this followed partial ownership prior to May 2005. Bid Shopping ran the channels Bid and Price Drop each day from 7:45am through to 1:30am. The channels were designed to sell consumer products via digital TV (currently carried by digital satellite, cable, and terrestrial) or the Internet.
On 1 August 2011, 'Sit-Up' was renamed 'Bid Shopping', with 'Bid TV', 'Price-Drop TV' and 'Speed Auction TV' becoming 'Bid', 'Price Drop' and 'Speed Auction' respectively.
On 21 May 2013, it was announced that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) had referred Sit-Up Limited to Ofcom for consideration of statutory sanctions following repeated breaches of the UK Code of Broadcast Advertising. Ofcom has confirmed that it has accepted the referral.
Since January 2012, there have been 33 ASA rulings against Sit-Up Ltd. The two main types of problem have been misleading pricing claims and misleading product descriptions.
In December 2013, the struggling Bid Shopping group was taken over by former Corporate Restructuring Lawyer Bryan Green; the channel posted pre-tax losses of £7.4m in 2011 and a 10% fall in sales.
In February 2014, it was revealed Bid Shopping had debts of £68m and was looking to enter a voluntary agreement with its creditors to keep the company going.
On 10 March 2014, Bid was rebranded as 'Shop at Bid' and took on a more traditional shopping channel look with the premium rate number replaced with a number costing 20p per minute, it also appears the channel is no longer having auctions and has gone for a traditional sell and buy format.
On 17 April 2014, Bid Shopping was put into administration; Shop at Bid and its sister channel Price Drop were closed down with immediate effect with around 200 jobs being lost.
On 18 February 2015, Grant Miller, through the company Bid Shopping Limited, acquired the intellectual property, patents, brands and domains of Sit-Up, which resulted in Sit-Up emerging from administration. The company is now working on re-launching the channel via online and selected TV broadcasting in the near future.
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