John Lewis has slow week but women's premium accessories shine

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Feb 19, 2019

A 0.6% dip in weekly spending at John Lewis Partnership to just over £206 million was largely accounted for by a drop in sales at the John Lewis department store chain and webstore, the company said on Tuesday.

In the seven days to February 16, total sales for the chain fell by 3.4% year-on-year and even the usually buoyant Fashion department couldn't drive it into positive territory.

Not that fashion was completely bad as the company said that women's accessories sales rose by as much as 10.9%, primarily driven by demand for premium brands.

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It will be interesting to see how the fashion department fares in the current week. It has benefited from cold weather clothing and accessories sales in recent periods, but with temperatures being unusually high for February, this could ignite interest in early spring season drops.

But that aside, the department’s overall sales rose only 1.2% last week and beauty, which comes under the department’s remit, was responsible for much of that. The company said that price-matching competitor beauty promotions through its commitment to being “never knowingly being undersold” drove Beauty, Wellbeing and Leisure sales up 7.2%. That's encouraging, but as we know, matching price cuts isn't necessarily good news for profit margins.

And once again the company still struggled with its Home department offer, sales falling as much as 7.6% in the latest week. That said, the department enjoyed a record week for Valentine’s Day-linked products with turnover here rising 27% year-on-year.