Sales lift at John Lewis
Online sales strong in December
January 3 2004
John Lewis has reported a strong sales increase in the run-up to Christmas and at the start of its post-holiday sales.
Its department store sales grew by 2.4 per cent in the week to December 20 and jumped by 6 per cent in the week to December 27. Supermarket business Waitrose saw a sales lift of 21.8 per cent in the wek to December 27.
John Lewis has also reported that its online operation doubled its sales in December. However, online sales are still a relatively small part of the business, contributing sales roughly the size of “a small to medium-sized department store.”
Simon Palethorpe, managing director of John Lewis Direct, told the Daily Telegraph newspaper: “At some point we will see more traditional retail patterns take over but there’ll be a couple more years of pretty serious growth rates and it will be several years before the figures are similar to traditional high street stores.”
