Dunelm grew its like-for-like sales for the half year to 29th December by 6.9 per cent to £506.7 million with a 17 per cent underlying pre-tax profits increase to £70 million. The retailer currently operates 171 UK stores and says it has scope to bring the total to 200 whilst focusing on the relaunch of its website which will leverage the technology and IP which it acquired with Worldstores. It confirmed that it has retired the Worldstores brand in order to focus wholly on its core brand offering.
The new website launch will allow for the introduction of click & collect services as well as support greater in-house development opportunities. It has already equipped and trained certain members of its retail staff with tablets to enable them to show customers the full available inventory to improve and modernise its in-store customer service.
“We are focused on introducing the new platform in a way which avoids disruption to the strong growth we are already seeing through the existing Dunelm.com platform,” said Nick Wilkinson, CEO. Adding: “The pace of roll-out will be contingent on the results from this initial launch. In the meantime, our existing platform is trading well, and we continue to see opportunities for further growth before we switch over.”
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