John Lewis sales fall again as fashion is hurt by mild weather

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Dec 11, 2018

The Christmas shopping season doesn't seem to be getting any better for John Lewis. After a strong Black Friday week, it seems to have slipped back with a series of weekly reports in which sales have been sluggish at best.

And the picture for the week to December 8 wasn't very encouraging with the retailer’s parent firm saying that its sales fell 3.8% to £291.53 million in the seven-day period.

Meanwhile, the John Lewis department store chain itself, and its webstore, suffered a heavier sales decline with a drop of 5.1%, which the company said was “partly due to a reduction in promotional activity compared to the same period last year.”

And the extent of how tough last week was can be seen from the fact that even the usually buoyant Fashion department saw a significant sales fall.

The company reported Fashion sales that were 6.8% lower and it blamed the climate as the mild weather continued to hurt sales of its cold weather categories. That said, womenswear performed well with a 3.7% rise, “driven by customers shopping for the party season.”

Home department sales were down 7.3%, continuing an almost-unbroken run of weak results. But Christmas tree sales were up 21% and Christmas baubles had a record seven days, up 19%, as customers prepared their homes for the festive period. Gift Food also performed well, with Hotel Chocolat and Quality Street still very popular.  

Electrical and Home Technology sales were slightly down (by just 0.9%) but Small Electrical sales continued to do well as customers bought the new Dyson Airwrap hairstyling devices.