Next has raised its profit forecast by £20m to £720m, adding to the £30m it had upgraded the figure to at the end of April. The retailer had exceeded its sales target by £75m for the 13 week period to May 1st, with store sales surging as they re-opened to queues of customers. This means that its first-quarter sales were 1.5 per cent lower than in 2019 and not 10 per cent lower than had been cautiously forecast. Online sales were up by 63 per cent putting Next in first place for UK clothing revenues via eCommerce.
Next CEO Simon Wolfson said: “I don’t think we’d have seen this spike if people didn’t have the money or if they worried about the future. What we’re seeing at the moment is pent-up demand that I don’t think is necessarily indicative of what is to come.”
Elsewhere in the market, retailers are reporting strong sales from consumers who have ‘been starved of their shopping fix’, with many customers reportedly having held on to their money until they could hit stores in person.
Meanwhile, Kurt Geiger has opened the UK’s largest shoe shop in Westfield, west London. Trading under its Shoeaholics fascia the new outlet offers 20,000 pairs of shoes in a space that equates to that of nine tennis courts. The business says it will greatly benefit from the closures of department store branches which had formerly been significant competitors for its offering.
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