John Lewis feels the chill as fashion sales fall

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Nov 20, 2018

It's been another bad week for John Lewis and while its parent company sales fell 4% in the seven days to November 17, the department store chain and its webstore saw their combined turnover dropping by 6.8% year-on-year.

So what went wrong? The company said that it was “a week of two halves. Early in the week sales continued to be impacted by the mild weather, but they increased significantly at the end of the week as a result of us launching our Christmas advert on Thursday, and a big increase in Black Friday deals on Friday and Saturday, which we price matched.”

That sudden change mid-week is understandable given how wintry the weather suddenly became in recent days and how big an impact the company’s Christmas ad starring Elton John always makes.

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The full extent of the tough times at John Lewis could be seen from the fact that even Fashion department sales fell 0.9%. These were affected by the weather but picked up in the last two days of the week due to a combination of matching competitive prices and the retailer’s own beauty offers proving appealing.

It was bad news again however for the Home department which has lagged behind other departments for all of this year. In the latest week its sales were down by a hefty 14.7%, “impacted by a reduction in competitor offers which meant we did less price matching.” The company said that the enduring mild weather also hurt sales of warm bedding products such as high-tog duvets. However, future orders for curtains and blinds, and furniture and flooring grew by 11% and 4.1% respectively.