ONE of Britain's biggest home shopping companies, Shop Direct, announced more than 1,000 redundancies in Merseyside and Manchester.
The company, formerly known as Littlewoods Home Shopping, said it will close its call centre in Crosby, Merseyside, with the loss of around 1,000 jobs.
Around 150 further redundancies will be made at the company's headquarters in Speke, and at Shop Direct's financial services division in Aintree, call centre in Preston and warehousing division in Manchester.
The firm said the growth of online shopping had led to a reduction in telephone orders.
Around 250 of the under-threat jobs may yet be saved if workers agree to relocation.
Shop Direct Group includes the former catalogue shopping giants of Littlewoods, Great Universal and Kays, as well as Additions Direct, Marshall Ward and Choice.
Mark Newton Jones, chief executive of Shop Direct Group, said: “We recognise that this will be a difficult time for those members of our team impacted by today's announcement.
“We do hope to relocate 250 of them and we will do everything we can to support those affected.
“Our business is changing because the way our customers choose to shop with us is changing.
“We anticipate that 70 per cent of our sales will be online by 2010-11 and, therefore, the future of our business is online-led.
“We are a strong and growing business.
“In order to maintain this growth, we need to continue to adapt and change to the needs of our customers.”
Shop Direct says it has around five million active customers  across its portfolio of brands in the UK.
In its January trading update, the Group announced sales were up nine per cent for the six-week period, with online sales growth of 44 per cent.
The company said its online business now accounts for 56 per cent of total sales, up from 18 per cent three years ago.
Shop Direct employs 10,500 people and, with sales of £1.6bn, claims to be the UK's largest online and home shopping retailer.
The firm says the redundancies are part of an 'ongoing successful transformation to be an online-led business'.
Workers were told at lunchtime that the 90-day consultation period was getting under way.