In April 1998 GUS raised its bid to 1.9bn. In June 1999 GUS announced that it was reducing the number of lines in Argos's principal catalogue from 9200 products to 7300 and was doing away with the smaller 5700 line catalogue. In August 1999 Argos was relaunched. In June 2000 GUS announced that it was going to merge its home shopping division with Argos to create Argos Retail Group. The change involved 800 redundancies.
Customers place an order and collect the items the following day.
In February 1997 Argos announced that it would be rolling out the chain in small towns. Argos first tested the format in 1996. The Littlewoods Organisation Littlewoods Index Littlewoods Index is a catalogue shop chain. The company is a subsidiary of The Littlewoods Organisation. In October 1995 Index announced that it was opening a national distribution centre at Wednesbury in the West Midlands.