Including rises in profits and sales for both Shop Direct and Halfords.
The Source rounds up some of the key retail stories of the week.
Sainsbury’s is growing the Argos partnership with eBay with plans for 200 digital click and collect points across its stores. The collection points will allow shoppers to pick up Tu clothing orders, eBay orders and DPD parcel deliveries from one location. 30 of the new desks – which will launch by the end of the year – will also offer Argos online collection.
Meanwhile, Sainsbury’s has also unveiled plans to launch several new Mini Habitat concessions. It will also add more Argos digital shop in shops at 20 of its larger stores by Christmas.
Shop Direct has seen its pre-tax profits rise 43.6% to £150.4 million for the year to June 30. Sales were up 4.3% to £1.86 billion. Online department store Very.co.uk saw sales jump 15.9%, while Shop Direct also said that 62% of online sales now come from mobile devices (up from 56% last year). The etailer said that Black Friday was its busiest ever trading day, while it also enjoyed a record breaking Christmas.
Halfords has enjoyed a 1.2% rise in like for like sales over the summer, boosted by the warm weather and the Olympics. The retailer launched a new range of children’s bikes with Sir Bradley Wiggins and a ladies range with Laura Trott earlier this year – both of whom won Olympic gold. Same store sales in the retail arm rose 1.1% in the 20 weeks to August 19. In addition, cycling like of likes in the period were up 1.9%.
Amazon has launched a free restaurant delivery service to its Prime members in 21 London postcodes.
Like for like retail sales fell 0.9% in the four weeks to August 27, with total sales down 0.3%, according to the BRC KPMG retail sales monitor. Continued promotional activity through August failed to boost fashion sales, which was the second worst performing category overall after footwear. BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson said slowing sales in non food categories could likely be attributed to the warm weather during the month.
John Lewis saw its sales creep up 0.8% to £87.5 million in the week to September 3. Fashion sales dropped 0.9%, while childrenswear, nursery and haberdashery was up 7.1%. Electrical and home technology sales also grew 5.5%.
Fashion retailer H&M saw its UK profits drop 17.3% to £51.8 million in its last financial year. While sales rose 5.9% to £1 billion over the year to November 30, 2015, net margin fell from 4.7% to 3.6%. UK boss Carlos Duarte told Retail Week it was a “challenging retail environment”.
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