John Lewis defies retail gloom

There are always stores that have problems with selling their goods. The main thing that makes some retailers have problems with their sales is the economy that might not go in the right direction. However, there is something that can help retailers sell their goods better and this thing is Mother Nature! The same thing happened to John Lewis! This store managed to get better sales than last year with 20%! And all of this happened because the weather got warmer all of the sudden that usual. The director or buying and brand at John Lewis, Peter Ruis, said that growth started Wednesday night on the store’s online page!

Department stores in general seem to do better even though the economy is not as well as it used to be. This is what Freddie George said who is a retail analyst.

He said that this growth in sales happened because the department stores are offering discounts. The reason why people started buying from John Lewis in waves is because of two really important things. One of them was the really hot weather and the other reason for the growth in sales was the fact that England had a football match with Slovenia in the World Cup! The sales in fashionable clothing grew really fast and well too! There was a 22.6% rise in sales in this department and also for children clothes that got up to 42%! The accessory sells grew with 22% and electric appliances and Internet technologies grew with 17.6% respectively 58%! The Special Buy laptops were at the peak of the IT sales. Home appliances and other such sales grew with 20.5%. You should know that all the John Lewis stores had positive sales. The one in Brent Cross had 15% more sales while the ones in Southampton and Kingston has 18% and 11% more sales. The fashion sales on johnlewis.com were higher with 80% and overall sales grew with 46%. The smallest rise in sells was in Waitrose with only an 8% growth.

These facts really made a lot of economic analysts and George too feel more confident about how the economy will turn out to be! But George said that we shouldn’t feel that confident about these numbers because at any time the economy can make this sector go bad again. The store Debenhams also made some profit by selling a lot of beauty products. Some officials say that these sells were also fueled by the fact that the stores had promotional prices but as soon as these sales will stop people will think about saving money again.