John Lewis sees mixed sales amidst mild weather
- Published: 15 February 2008 09:19
- Author: Jessica Price Brown
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- Last Updated: 15 February 2008 09:19
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John Lewis saw sales rise 5% for the week to February 9 but sales were hit by mild weather last weekend.
The department store group said that fashion "stole the show" during the week and sales of the category rose 7.8%. There was double-digit gains across both menswear and womenswear. It said that new stock had performed well with solid gains across branded collections and John Lewis' own-label fashion. Girlswear was the best performing category within the kid's department.
John Lewis retail operations director, Patrick Lewis said: "Steady trade on Sunday and Monday got us off to a healthy start. We then accelerated in the middle of the week against very low figures from last year when snowstorms held back trade. That left us sitting on a strong increase going into Saturday, but beautiful weather diverted shoppers on the final day, making it impossible to maintain. We ended up more than 5% ahead of last year and almost double that on the two-year comparison."
Johnlewis.com scored sales growth of 39.5%. The best performing branch for the week was London Oxford Street with gains of 14.3% while the worst performers were Peter Jones in London's Sloane Square which saw sales fall 10.2% while the Watford branch fell back 9.5%.
