John Lewis sales offer Christmas cheer
Stronger trading kick-starts December
December 6 2003
Santa Claus is coming to town after all, as least as far as the UK’s leading department store group is concerned.
John Lewis has seen a strong jump in sales, recording a 17 per cent week-on-week increase since Monday, December 1. After a sluggish November, the group had previously warned that it had ‘a mountain to climb’ to hit its seasonal sales targets.
Sales are now 0.9 per cent up year-on-year, and if the trend continues, John Lewis expects to see total Christmas sales 1 or 2 per cent ahead of last year.
The John Lewis Partnership operates 26 department stores, as well as the Waitrose supermarket group, and its weekly sales figures are often a bellwether for the rest of UK retail.
The uplift in sales tallies with a report from consumer traffic analyst SPSL that the final week of November saw consumers start to switch to festive spending mode.
However, the good news for John Lewis may not have filtered through generally. Rival department store chains Debenhams and House of Fraser are discounting, while retailers including Woolworths and WH Smith are promoting multi-buy savings on core entertainment products such as CDs and DVDs, in a bid to persuade customers not to do all their Christmas shopping at the supermarkets.
