Fashion, beauty and jewellery get John Lewis Mother's Day boost, denim also up

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Mar 28, 2017

It was a mixed week for John Lewis in the seven days to March 25 as total sales fell 4.1% to £81.72m, skewed downwards by the fact that Easter, a major shopping booster, fell in that week last year but is much later this time.

However, sales accelerated compared to the previous week as Mother’s Day gave shoppers lots of reasons to buy fashion, gifts, beauty and other products.

“We saw very strong performance at our store in St Pancras Station as customers bought last minute Mother's Day gifts on their journeys,” shop trade director Maggie Porteous said.

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So it is no surprise that fashion continued its strong run with a 3.8% uplift year-on-year. Even less surprising, womenswear specifically rose 11% to continue a good run for the category in recent weeks. As well as Mother’s day, the company said the womenswear rise was thanks to the warmer weather and arrival of new collections, including its new denim lifestyle brand And/Or.

Beauty, wellbeing and leisure did even better with sales up 16.5%, again due to Mother's Day, and jewellery benefitted too with a 24% surge.

But while home-related gifts rose 38.8%, the home category overall continued its relative weakness. It fell 3.3%, although the arrival of spring saw sales of carpets and other floor products rising 23.8% and beds and bedroom furniture rising 4.8%.

And while electrical, home and technology sales were down 12.2% year on year due to strong promotions in the comparable week last year, sales of mobile phones and photography equipment surged 27.1%.