Blair to Sell Credit Card Business
Blair Corp. has reached an agreement to sell its credit card business to Alliance Data Systems Corp. for $176.3 million, the companies said yesterday.Blair, a multichannel marketer of apparel and home products, offers merchandise through the Blair and Irvine Park catalogs and Web sites. The company's annual sales total $500 million. Its private label credit portfolio consists of more than 800,000 accounts and generates in excess of $200 million in annual credit sales.
The transaction includes a 10-year agreement with Alliance to provide services including account acquisition and activation, receivables funding, account authorization, statement generation, marketing services, remittance processing and customer service functions.
The transaction has been approved by both companies and is expected to close in the fourth quarter.
