Matalan sees strong Christmas
Like-for-like growth across festive season
Matalan has enjoyed strong Christmas trading, reporting like-for-like growth of 5.3 per cent across the 10 weeks to January 8 despite continued price deflation in the UK clothing sector.
Total sales grew by 11.4 per cent despite a 4.4 per cent deline in average selling prices. Across the 19 weeks to January 8, total sales grew by 11.8 per cent, with like-for-like growth of 5 per cent.
Matalan said that an encouraging start to its autumn/winter season continued into the festive period, all product areas making progress, boosted by better availability and strong customer response to the retailer monthly mailer.
[img r]matalaninstore.jpg[/img]Matalan said its profit expectations for the year are unchanged. John King, chief executive, said: “We set out this year to return Matalan to like-for-like sales growth and to build a platform for the business to grow in the future. These figures show the business is responding to those efforts.
“Customers like our improved value proposition, and better execution of retailing disciplines has helped us deliver an improved Christmas performance despite the more difficult market conditions.”
