Editing Allders (section)

==Decline==
[[File:CroydonNorthEnd.jpg|thumb|[[North End, Croydon|North End]] and Allders in 2005]]
Shares in Allders crashed in 1998 after disappointing sales and difficulties integrating the Maples furniture group. Nevertheless, it continued a policy of expansion, acquiring the premises of the former C & A stores at [[Guildford]], [[Kingston upon Thames]], [[Leicester]], [[Meadowhall (shopping centre)|Sheffield (Meadowhall)]], and [[York]] in 2000 and later the large C & A building on the south side of [[Oxford Street]] in [[London]]. The "At Home with Allders" trading name was replaced with "Allders At Home" on conversion of a number of the C&A stores to an expanded home format. Problems continued, however. In Croydon, there were plans to build a new shopping centre, [[Park Place (Croydon)|Park Place]], on the store's site and much of the area to the south. A new Allders would be built opposite the Town Hall. Croydon Council's partner in this plan was developer [[Minerva (property firm)|Minerva plc]]. In late 2002 Minerva was part of a new group called Scarlett Retail, named after Terry Green's daughter, that bid for Allders, with [[Lehman Brothers]] investment bank and a management team including Terry Green, the former chief executive of [[Debenhams]] and [[British Home Stores|BHS]].

Some felt at the time that Scarlett's bid was based on Minerva's intention to acquire Allders' site for its Park Place project, in order to sell the plot to another retailer, probably John Lewis. The bid was felt by many to be overpriced. Nevertheless, Scarlett paid Tom Hunter an improved price and they landed the company in early 2003 for about £162m ($316m). Green became chief executive and set about an overhaul of Allders' image. It was claimed that some of the traditional homeware, haberdashery and clothing for middle-aged, middle-income women was reduced, with a new emphasis on young fashion and beauty products, though this was denied by Terry Green.<ref name="rankine">{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2904441/Allders-chiefs-strategy-was-completely-wrong.html|title=Allders chief's strategy was 'completely wrong'|author=Kate Rankine|date=28 January 2005|access-date=23 September 2012|newspaper=Daily Telegraph}}</ref>