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As revealed in April’s Growth Company Investor, two former directors of online clothes retailer ASOS have floated a consultancy called e-retail on AIM, having raised £575,000 net at 3.5p a share.

E-retail’s shares opened at 4.75p before settling back at 4.25p to show an initial premium of 21 per cent. That values the company at £2.5 million. Nabarro Wells acted as Nomad and Seymour Pierce Ellis as broker.

AIM-quoted ASOS saw its shares soar 1,500 per cent last year from 5p to 85p and investors will be hoping that e-retail replicates that performance.

Quentin Griffiths, who was marketing director at ASOS, and John Morgan, who was finance director until last September, were looking to pull in £1 million for e-retail, a consultancy advising fledgling online retailers. The company will also consider taking equity stakes in clients.

Griffiths wants to use the experience he gained at ASOS of turning around a young venture to assist ‘e-tailers needing £100,000 or so to get into profit’. Several opportunities are already being assessed. He was one of the founders of ASOS alongside chief executive Nick Robertson.

Since leaving ASOS last summer, Griffiths has also set up YourSchoolUniform.com, which allows parents to buy school uniforms cheaply online, and AfterTheClub.co.uk which aims to re-unite people who have met on the dance floor of nightclubs across the UK.

Mark Watson-Mitchell, who runs AIM investment vehicle Addworth, is e-retail’s chairman. Affiliate marketing specialist Jessica Luthi, another former ASOS employee, has also been engaged by the group to attack the UK online retail market, where sales worth £14.5 billion were made in 2004.