LIVERPOOL’S flagship John Lewis store bucked the group trend and achieved an impressive 20% like-for-like sales increase during last year.
The new site within the £1bn Liverpool One development provided 21% extra sales space, compared with its former home of 60 years, in Church Street.
At the time of the group interim results, in September, Liverpool managing director Margaret Jacques revealed her team had exceeded sales expectations by 14%. The annual results to January 31, announced yesterday, revealed that figure had slipped to 8%, but, in contrast to the rest of the group, the Liverpool store has certainly delivered.
Mrs Jacques said: “The move yielded outstanding results, with our branch consistently outperforming targets and customers responding well to our new layout and product assortment.
“Since our relocation, we have celebrated our highest sterling turnover in a single day and finished the year 8% above expectations and 20% up on last year.”
Chris Earnshaw, home department operations manager selling, added: “Our strong interim results were the result of the initial buzz generated by opening and in quarter three we resumed more normal trade.
“We had a strong but late Christmas and performed above expectation in clearance. We had a good result in electrical home technology and sales continued to grow in fashion, thanks to some great new brands, though in home, similar to the rest of the division, we've found it tough.”
Group results released yesterday showed that like-for-like sales at John Lewis slipped by 3.4%, while the supermarket arm Waitrose could only manage a meagre 0.4% increase in its like-for-like levels.
Trading in the first five weeks since January 31 was also tough, with John Lewis like-for-like figures showing an 8.8% decline.
Chairman Charlie Mayfield admitted: “It was a very tough year.”
The retail group’s trading decline was illustrated in a 31% cut in bonus pay-outs for the group’s 69,000 staff, known as partners.
However, the group is holding out for better trading conditions later this year, saying it is hoping for a possible improvement across the board in the second half of 2009, driven by government moves to shore up the banking sector which it says will hopefully feed through to consumer confidence.
