The North East-based department store group has decided to swap retailing for recruitment. It has sold its TV rental business for £811,000 to a subsidiary of Granada, and is currently in talks to dispose of its remaining retail operations. This comes at the end of a successful turnaround of the business by Ron Trenter. The chairman was brought in after the troubled takeover of the Reject Shops business in the early 1990s, but will soon be replaced by Andrew Garner, currently chairman of recruitment arm Garner International.