In a week which saw trade fuelled by Black Friday and price matching of competitor events, John Lewis delivered sales of £179.1m, up 21.8% on last year and up 56.8% week on week to deliver the biggest ever week for sales in its 150 year trading history. This surpassed the previous sales record of £164.4m which was set during the week before Christmas last year.
The retailer hit a record week for online sales, up 42.2% year on year. On Black Friday itself, several of its shops achieved record takings for the day, including Oxford Street, York, Southampton, Liverpool, Ipswich and Tamworth.
Black Friday started at the stroke of midnight as customers logged on early to browse johnlewis.com resulting in a 300% increase of traffic during the early hours of trading. Continuing the trend for mobile shopping, approximately 70% of traffic came from smartphones and tablets between midnight and 8am. For the first time ever, all John Lewis shops opened early at 8am and at the same time, online sales also peaked with almost 13,000 orders placed on johnlewis.com between 8am and 9am. In John Lewis' distribution centres across the country on Friday, teams picked and packed +54% more online parcels compared to last year's Black Friday event, with this uplift increasing to +87% on Saturday as customer orders from Friday were processed.
John Lewis' Home directorate saw increased trade, closing the week +3.6% year on year. It was another record week for lighting, up 10.2% year on year whilst furniture sales also remained strong at +15.5% year on year.
Dino Rocos, operations director at John Lewis, says: "There was clearly huge customer anticipation of Black Friday this year and we knew we had high expectations to meet, both in terms of the products we had on offer through our Never Knowingly Undersold commitment, and in ensuring that we fulfilled customer orders as promised.
"While the sales figures are attention-grabbing, for me our biggest achievement was delivering an operation which ran like clockwork. We picked and packed 87% more online parcels on Saturday than we did last year, and to have delivered successfully on customer expectation is a testament to the work of our Partners both on Black Friday itself and in our forward-planning. Our website coped well with exceptional demand whilst the atmosphere in our shops remained both seasonal and calm with customers enjoying extended opening hours and the great offers to be had."
