Department store group House of Fraser today provided a Christmas trading update for the weeks to 3 January 2015 highlighting a record performance over the festive trading period.
This year, that period started in the week of Black Friday, with like-for-like sales up 8%, cash gross margins up 9% and online sales up by a significant 31%
The British retailer delivered in all categories and routes to market with a particularly strong spend seen on house brands and Black Friday online sales up by 125% on the previous year as well as up nearly 70% on the previous largest online sales day;
John King, CEO of House of Fraser said:
“We are delighted with our Christmas trading performance. This year we saw a very strong start to the key Christmas season with Black Friday being particularly successful. This positive momentum continued over the entire critical selling period with a record sales level during the final week before Christmas. Our performance demonstrates the success of our strategy to continuously improve our online proposition, develop both our House Brands and premium branded proposition and invest in our stores to give our customers the best possible shopping experience.
With the record sales and margin performance in the period and a close focus on operational efficiencies, we expect to report a further growth in full year earnings. I would like to thank all of our colleagues and brand partners for their hard work and support over this period.
We will continue to invest in our online proposition and as a result we expect to continue to see sales growth from this channel. During 2014 we refurbished our store in Bath which has seen sales increase by 27% since the completion of the works and we plan to refurbish more stores during 2015 as well as build on our international portfolio. Given this further investment, we believe that we are well placed to continue to grow in 2015.”
