Housewares Business-to-business magazine for housewares retailers and their suppliers
The week to November 28 was department store group John Lewis’ biggest ever week for sales in its history, at £187.7m.
In a week which saw John Lewis’ trade fuelled by Black Friday and price matching of competitor events, sales were up 4.8% on last year, up 27.6% on two years and up 60.1% week-on-week. Sales on johnlewis.com were up 15.5% year-on-year.
In EHT (Electricals & Home Technology), sales were up 5.5% on the year. Small electrical items were up 15.2%, while vision (which includes TVs) rose by 22.6%. TVs sold at a rate of 3.2 every minute and John Lewis sold 670 premium OLED models. ‘Connected home’ products nearly doubled in sales at 90% up, and wearable tech was up 850% on the year, with Fitbits up over 1,200%. Dyson products were popular too: vacuums were up 115% and fan heaters sold four times the volume of last year.
Trade in Home increased by 3.7% year-on-year. Fitted furniture sales were up 31.7% and beds and bedroom furniture was up 21.2%. Christmas decorations and gift food were both down on last year, as customers were focused on bigger purchases on Black Friday, although John Lewis expects this to build into December.
Dino Rocos, operations director of John Lewis, said: “Black Friday marks the first of the three peaks of Christmas and there was huge anticipation for the day this year and high expectations to meet.
“I’m very proud of the fact that we delivered successfully for our customers; this is testament to the work of our Partners [staff] both on the day itself and in our forward planning. The stand-out success of the week came from our distribution teams, who, across Black Friday and the following Saturday and Sunday, processed 18% more parcels compared to last year. This equated to five units per second during the peak hour.”
