Housewares Business-to-business magazine for housewares retailers and their suppliers
House of Fraser posted record sales for its Christmas trading period, for the six weeks to January 3.
The department store group reported like-for-like sales (ex-VAT) up 8% and cash gross margins up 9%.Online sales (ex-VAT) rose 31.2%, and bricks and mortar stores traded up 4.2% on a like-for-like basis. Black Friday online sales were up over 125% on the previous year and up nearly 70% on the previous largest online sales day. Strong sales continued throughout the trading period, with a record performance in the last seven days before Christmas, up 6.8%
House of Fraser ceo John King said: “We’re delighted with our Christmas trading performance. This year we saw a very strong start to the key Christmas season, with Black Friday being particularly successful. This positive momentum continued over the entire critical selling period with a record sales level during the final week before Christmas.
“Our performance demonstrates the success of our strategy to continuously improve our online proposition, develop both our house brands and premium branded proposition, and invest in our stores to give our customers the best possible shopping experience. During 2014 we refurbished our store in Bath which has seen sales increase by 27% since the completion of the works and we plan to refurbish more stores during 2015, as well as build on our international portfolio. Given this further investment, we believe that we are well placed to continue to grow in 2015.”
