25.09.2025 | by Lili

What is Argos?

Highlights

Argos, owned by Sainsbury’s, is a hybrid marketplace with both online and physical stores
Argos is a general marketplace offering a wide array of products
Due to counterfeit and grey market issues, online brand protection measures are necessary to protect your IP rights on Argos

Argos in numbers
e-Commerce in the UK
Online brand protection on Argos
Conclusion

Founded in 1972, Argos is a UK-based retailer that started as a mail-order company. Today, Argos is one of the most successful retailers in the country, operating both physical stores and an online marketplace. The company made the switch to the internet pretty fast, opening its webstore as early as 1995. Popular supermarket chain Sainsbury’s acquired Argos in 2016.

Screenshot of the homepage of argos.co.uk

Screenshot of the homepage of argos.co.uk

Argos is a general marketplace, offering a wide array of products from electronics to furniture, fashion, gaming, health and beauty items, and even jewellery and other accessories.

Argos in numbers

With 43.9 million monthly visitors, Argos is the fourth most popular website in its category in the UK behind Amazon, eBay, and Temu. Over 95% of these visitors are based in the UK, with 0.85% coming from the US and 0.43% from Ireland.

The company reports a 1.6% increase in annual sales for 2024, contributing to a revenue increase of 2%. Overall, the Sainsbury group noted a 3.8% revenue growth to 32.7 billion GBP, although pre-tax profits shrank by 15.3% to 277 million GBP.

e-Commerce in the UK

The UK has a population of over 69.5 million people, 97.8% of whom have access to the internet. 62.1 million people shop online in the country, which is roughly the entire adult population.

With figures like that, it’s no wonder that the United Kingdom possesses the third-largest e-Commerce market in the world, behind China and the US. Currently, B2C e-Commerce revenue amounts to $219.6 billion and is projected to reach $326.8 billion by 2030. This corresponds to a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.8%.

| The UK possesses the third-largest e-Commerce market in the world

e-Commerce is responsible for 30.7% of all retail activities, and mobile transactions take up about 60% of all online purchases. Consumer electronics, fashion, footwear, and accessories are by far the most popular product categories in e-Commerce.

Online brand protection on Argos

Although Argos is a respected marketplace in the UK, it still carries the risk of featuring IP-infringing product listings, especially since it works with third-party sellers. Even though Argos has an IP protection policy, counterfeit and grey market products could still find their way to the platform.

For example, Japanese manufacturer Nichia filed a lawsuit against Argos for marketing a certain type of LED product sold by third-party sellers that infringed on Nichia’s patents. The lawsuit ended with a settlement where both Argos and the seller were required to pay Nichia damages.

The risks of infringement are higher for brands and businesses with extensive distribution networks. Such a network tends to offer opportunities to replicate products or market them without authorization.

But this is where online brand protection comes in. globaleyez’s comprehensive services offer flexible and scalable solutions for issues related to IP infringement. Depending on the situation, we can tailor our services to meet your brand protection needs.

For instance, our online monitoring services pick up potentially infringing content on the internet, including marketplaces, social media platforms, app stores, webshop domains, etc. In case of suspicious product listings, we offer test purchases to determine the origins of a product, and/or the identity of its seller.

We carefully document all our findings to aid in an eventual lawsuit. Our screenshotting tool, screenseal, provides you with time-stamped screenshots that are indispensable for proving an infringement.

Once we determine that a certain piece of content indeed infringes on your IP rights, we enforce those rights by demanding its removal from the internet.

Conclusion

Argos is one of the leading hybrid marketplaces in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, its acclaimed status doesn’t protect it from fraudsters who aim to make money by infringing on your IP rights. Don’t let them ruin your business!

Contact us if you’re worried about the protection of your IP rights on Argos, or anywhere else online.

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