John Lewis significantly outperformed the market again this year, building on last year’s strong peak trading performance despite the challenging, highly promotional trading environment. Sir Charlie Mayfield, Chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, said: “We traded well during the Christmas period, with gross sales in the six weeks to 30 December £1,962m, up 2.5% on last year, with 1.4% sales growth in Waitrose and 3.6% in John Lewis. This was due to the exceptional hard work and commitment of our Partners. We focused on our differentiated product offering, attention to service and strong value proposition, underpinned by our Never Knowingly Undersold promise.”
“Our inspiring Christmas proposition, innovative product assortment and competitive position on price helped us to build sales momentum across the period. We also offered customers popular shop experiences including my John Lewis customer Christmas events which saw a 15% increase in attendance and an 18% uplift in sales compared to last year. Across the three product areas there was a particularly good performance in Fashion up 4.9%, and EHT up 5.0% while Home was down 0.3% as customers were more cautious about bigger purchases for their homes,” he adds.
Trading highlights include:
- Gross sales at the John Lewis Partnership were up 2.5% versus last year to £1,962m;
- Waitrose gross sales (excluding fuel) were £928m, up 1.4% versus last year and up 1.5% on a like-for-like basis;
- John Lewis gross sales were £1,034m, up 3.6% versus last year and up 3.1% on a like-for-like basis and significantly outperformed the market by 4.5%;
- Black Friday was John Lewis’s most successful sales day in its history and contributed to the biggest ever week of sales, up 7.2% year-on-year;
- 65.5% of John Lewis Click & collect sales collected from Waitrose stores, an increase of 0.9% pts compared to last year.
