John Lewis reports a good Black Friday

Retailer John Lewis has reported one of its best ever short term trading periods, with a great Black Friday weekend in 2015. The company reported its “biggest ever week for sales” and the stand out success from the firm’s distribution teams who processed 18% more parcels than Black Friday 2014.

The partnership said in a statement, “In a week which saw trade fuelled by Black Friday and our price matching of competitor events, sales were up 4.8% on last year, up 27.6% on 2 years and up 60.1% week-on-week. It was John Lewis’s biggest ever week for sales in our trading history, at £187.7m. Online sales on johnlewis.com were up 15.5% year-on-year.”

Operations director at John Lewis, Dino Rocos said, “Black Friday marks the first of the three peaks of Christmas and there was huge anticipation for the day this year and high expectations to meet. I’m very proud of the fact that we delivered successfully for our customers, this is testament to work of our Partners both on Black Friday itself and in our forward-planning.”

As reported earlier this week, not all major national retailers had a good ride on Black Friday with chaos breaking out at Argos which was overwhelmed with orders coming in at every 0.1 of a second at one stage. This caught the distribution teams off guard and there were hundreds of complaints on its social media accounts from disappointed customers who did not get their goods at all in some cases. The media storm has yet to abate over Argos misfortunes, which was contrary to almost every other national chain.

John Lewis Partnership however seemed well prepared. Roco said of the next 6 weeks trading, “Looking ahead, our teams in our shops and online operations are ready for another busy week as we go into the first full week of December.”

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