Sainsbury's Tu to become £300m brand

Sainsbury's clothing brand Tu is on track to become a £300 million brand this year, after the supermarket posted like-for-like sales growth of 4% for the 28 weeks to October 6.

Total retail sales were up 4.7% to £9.9 billion and pre-tax profits also jumped 19.5% to £232m for the same period.

Sainsbury's has grown sales by £2.3bn, and is ahead of its target to reach £2.5bn sales growth by March 2008.

Tu is now the eleventh largest clothing retailer in the UK by volume and the range was introduced into a further 13 stores during the first half, taking the total to 262 stores. Sainsbury's plans to double the space dedicated to Tu in the next three years.

The supermarket will dedicate 50% of the new space to non-food ranges as the company develops larger stores of over 70,000 sq ft.