A Bolton-based online retailer of kitchen appliances and electricals, with recycling, mobile and finance services.
AO World, trading as AO and ao.com, is a UK online retailer of household appliances such as washing machines, fridges, dishwashers and cookers, and other electricals. It also runs a business to business arm that sells on behalf of other retailers, a mobile phone service called AO Mobile, a finance product called AO Finance and appliance recycling.
AO's mission, in its results statement, is "to be the global destination for electricals", and its strategy is to create value by being brilliant for its customers. It has a guiding approach called The AO Way, and it calls its employees AOers. It has an all-employee incentive called the Value Creation Plan, which it says gives every AOer the chance to share in exceptional growth. Founder and chief executive John Roberts described the AO Mobile launch as "a game changer for mobile phone customers".
The company began in 2000 as Appliances Online, was rebranded AO.com in 2013 and listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2014. Its headquarters are in Bolton, where it occupies about 50,000 square feet of offices. It opened a Manchester city centre office in January 2018 for its in-house multimedia, IT and sales teams. Its recycling site in Telford, Shropshire, processed its millionth fridge in 2019, and a plastics plant was unveiled there in October 2019. It sponsors AO Arena in Manchester and Lancashire County Cricket Club.
AO has made acquisitions such as Mobile Phones Direct in 2018 and musicMagpie in 2024. It also closed its German business in 2022 and the Dutch business in 2019, so it now focuses on the UK. The leadership has changed more than once: Steve Caunce was chief executive from 2017 to 2019 and John Roberts returned in January 2019. The same results statement (for FY21, so dated) said AO created over 1,200 new roles in the year, reported a UK Net Promoter Score of 85, and that AO Business sells electricals and installation to housebuilders and housing associations. It said it recycled over 1.3 million appliances in FY21, and that its Telford site includes a plastics refinement facility that earned its first revenue from recycled plastics. We did not find a current employee total.
People at AO work in customer service, sales, digital and technology, marketing, multimedia, logistics and delivery, finance, and recycling and engineering at Telford. Check its own careers pages for current roles.
Website: ao.com
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