John Lewis own brands and Apple Watch outperform in latest week

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Sep 25, 2018

John Lewis Partnership continues to struggle against a tough retail environment. But although its sales have fallen again in the latest week (by 0.2% to £213.64 million), it's still outperforming many of its retail peers.

Meanwhile the John Lewis department store chain has also seen its sales falling in the past eight weeks, but the drop has been only 0.2% and in the seven days to last Saturday, it managed an increase with a 0.5% rise.

Clearly though, trading at the moment isn't as strong as the company would like and it did say that warm weather at the beginning of the week impacted sales in some areas. But launches of new products during the week, including its Christmas Shop, boosted sales.

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However, overall Fashion directory sales (which include beauty) were down 6.8% compared to the same week last year when it price matched a competitor’s promotion on beauty products which wasn’t repeated last week. Yet sales of its own-brand womenswear continue to be strong with sales up 9.8%, which is good news given the amount of investment the company has put into its own labels.

And it got a boost from Electrical and Home Technology sales that were up 10.8%. Communications Technology product sales were up 29.8%, driven largely by demand for the new Apple iPhone XS and Apple Watch Series 4, which went on sale last week in its shops and online.

But Home sales were down 3.4%, although sales of Gift, Cook and Dine products were up 1.6% on last year driven by the launch of the Christmas Shop, where sales were up 3% on the previous year. It’s also seeing very strong demand for its exclusive personalised Quality Street tins.