City File: Innovatoins mail order

NEED some nasal hair clippers? Or a folding walking stick? Or an electric shaver for the wool bobbles on your jumpers? Look no further than the Innovations mail order catalogue, which is crammed with weird and wonderful gadgets.

The company behind this and many other specialist home shopping catalogues - or 'specialogues' - is Kleeneze Holdings, which is emerging from a traumatic period of losses. Last week it shed the last of its management distractions, injecting The Leading Edge, a small chain of gadget shops, into a joint venture with London Electricity. Now its managers, after seven other disposals, are free to concentrate on the two main catalogue divisions.

If the chief executive Robin Klein can exploit the existing database of mail order customers to win recruits to newly acquired catalogues like Xtend, Stocking Fillas and Hawkshead, the shares will motor. But at 209p, they are high-risk. They have already had a massive boost from hopes about its latest product, the Battery Manager.

Like the nasal clippers, the shares are for the courageous.