The Very Group which operates digital retailer Very, has announced its Christmas and Black Friday period trading results for the seven weeks to 23 December 2022. Sales at Very retail grew by 2.2 per cent compared with the corresponding period in 2021, when Omicron drove strong performance among UK online retailers. Compared to the corresponding period in 2019 (pre-pandemic), Very retail sales grew by 19.6 per cent. Toys, gifts and beauty (+17.7 per cent YoY), and home (+10.2 per cent YoY) were the standout categories for the business with games consoles and Ninja air fryers among the best-selling items.
When including Littlewoods Group retail sales declined by 1.3 per cent YoY.
Lionel Desclée, Group CEO, The Very Group, commented: “Our team pulled out all the stops to deliver an amazing Christmas for the families we serve and a strong trading performance for the period.
“We recorded year-on-year growth in Very and grew market share despite the challenging backdrop. As expected, our customers prioritised toys, gifts and beauty items for their loved ones, justifying our decision to invest in stock within the category.
“Our performance was underpinned by our trusted supplier and delivery partner relationships and our highly automated fulfilment centre, Skygate, which allowed us to meet our customers’ expectations throughout the festive period.
“The impact of the high cost of living will create challenges for all retailers in the year ahead, but we’re confident that our combination of online retail and flexible ways to pay will continue to offer our customers the convenience, value and flexibility they need.”
7.8m items were processed at Skygate, Very’s highly automated fulfilment centre. 216,000 items were processed on 22 November 2022, the busiest day of Very’s peak period. Good stock availability was maintained throughout peak thanks to Very’s month-long Black Friday campaign (1 November to 1 December 2022), which helped manage spikes in demand.
An average of 139,000 customers a week used the Very Assistant chatbot (+1.8 per cent YoY), which draws on artificial intelligence to process natural language and answer more than 50 types of customer service query. This helped to reduce calls to Very’s contact centre by 9 per cent YoY.
App visits increased +9.4 per cent YoY. App visits as a percentage of total Very visits reached 41.4 per cent (Christmas 2021: 37.7 per cent). App sales made up 45.4 per cent of total Very sales (Christmas 2021: 39.9 per cent).
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