John Lewis own-brand fashion boosts sales despite slow week overall

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jan 29, 2019

The John Lewis department stores chain dragged down weekly figures at its parent company, John Lewis Partnership, in the latest week with the seven days to January 26 seeing no more than a 0.1% sales rise for the group as a whole.

Total sales rose to just under £199 million. But while the company's Waitrose supermarkets managed a 2.3% increase, sales at the John Lewis chain itself (and its webstore) fell by as much as 3.5% during the week.

That might seem unsurprising coming close to the end of the clearance sale period with the assumption that consumers are not yet feeling interested in buying into final reductions or shopping for spring fashion pieces in large numbers.

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But the late stages of the clearance period don’t have to be weak. The company said that the fall came due to tough comparisons with last year when strong clearance sales helped to drive figures upwards. 

And while the ongoing cold weather might have dampened enthusiasm among some shoppers for the incoming spring collections, the company said that it did see customers beginning to buy into the new season products. And as they continue to buy anything that could keep them warm in cold weather, this meant that Fashion department sales were up, even though there was weakness elsewhere at the chain. 

Fashion sales rose 5%, driven by demand for John Lewis’s own-brand fashion. The womenswear label Modern Rarity rose an astonishing 52% and Womenswear Accessories had a “particularly strong week” with sales up 14.1% on last year.  

However, the Home department remains a perennial under-performer for the company and its sales fell as much as 7.2% in the seven days, although it said appointments for the firm to measure people up for windows and flooring rose strongly as customers made plans to update their homes.