Shop Direct, which operates Very, Littlewoods and VeryExclusive, maintained momentum with sales increasing by 6 per cent year-on-year, to December 25th, and significantly ahead of the market and against strong comparative results last year.
In particular, Very delivered growth of 17 per cent year-on-year underpinned by its continued focus on a consistent strategy. This combines a unique combination of the world’s most famous brands, an easy and ever more personalised mobile shopping experience and unique, flexible ways to spread the cost. Very is on track to deliver over £1bn in sales this year, and Shop Direct is on track for another record year of sales and profit. Trading highlights included: 82 million site visits, up 8 per cent year-on-year; 284,000 fragrance units sold; mobile phone sales up by 74 per cent year on year and clothing and footwear sales up 6 per cent year-on-year despite unusually warm weather. Black Friday sales were up by 64 per cent year on year and generated 4.2 million web visits. The business also scored strongly on mobile growth with sales via mobile devices up 32 per cent year on year and representing 63 per cent of Christmas online sales. Very’s new mobile app had over 600,000 downloads.
The business now has a 100 per cent digital focus, with no catalogues or stores. It is now focused on 3 retail brands, down from six last year, and offering 1100 well known brands and 70,000 lines. It will continue to accelerate personalisation in 2016 with customer journeys tailored to them and will invest £50 million to achieve this.
Commenting on the results, Alex Baldock, group CEO, said ” Christmas 2015 was a record-breaker for Shop Direct, and we’re pleased to see our momentum continue to build. The received wisdom is that every retailer should be multi-channel. We don’t buy that. We like being a digital pureplay. It allows us to keep things simple and focus our energy on mobile innovation, which has been a big factor in our record peak trading. Looking forward to 2016, we’ll stick to delivering our strategy of making good things easily accessible to more people. In particular, 2016 will be the year of personalisation for Shop Direct. Personalisation is at the heart of making the shopping experience even easier for our customers, enabled by heavy investment in Big Data and technology which we expect to make a big impact in 2016″.
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