Homeware retailer Made.com is expected to formally appoint administrators on Monday following a court hearing less than two weeks after it stopped taking orders.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) has previously been appointed to oversee a sale of intellectual property associated with the collapsed firm.

It is expected that the Made.com name and brand will be sold immediately, with The Guardian reporting that high street retailer Next is interested in a cut-price deal. It may however face competition from Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group, which also owns House of Fraser, Jack Wills, GAME and Sports Direct and has a reputation for buying up failing or failed businesses.

Less clear is the fate of around 500 employees who will now be jobless and thousands of customers who have been left with unfulfilled orders. PWC will advise customers on how to get a refund once it has been appointed, but there is no guarantee that they will get their money back.

The company stopped taking orders last month after failing to find a buyer, with no party capable of matching Made's timetable.

Set up in 2010 and launched in France in 2013, Made was conceived as a challenger for affordable homeware outlets like Ikea. It was valued at almost £800 million when it floated on the London Stock Exchange in mid-2021. The company suspended trading of its shares on 1 November.

Reflecting on Made’s fortunes, last week Brent Hoberman, a co-founder of made.com, said: “Made got caught with massive inventory at just the wrong time. The model had previously always been about minimal stock and wastage. What was once a differentiated model morphed into being more similar to other retailers.”

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