John Lewis fashion gets warm weather and casualwear boost, wearable tech also strong

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
May 23, 2017

Fashion had a better week at John Lewis in the seven days to May 20 after the previous week’s dip as overall sales at the retail chain and its website rose just 1.1% to £76.3m but fashion sales rose 4.9%.

Turnover was boosted by customers buying casual clothing ahead of next week’s half-term school holidays, the upcoming summer holidays and the predicted warmer weather that seems to have finally arrived this week. All of that helped drive womenswear sales up by 7% and menswear up by 6.3%.

And beauty, wellbeing and leisure performed even better that fashion with sales up 14.2% year-on-year due to the retailer price matching a competitor's promotional event.

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But home sales returned to the sluggish situation we have seen for much of the last couple of months, although there was an increase in customers placing deposits for future orders.

Meanwhile electrical and home tech sales rose 0.8%, with communications tech up 5.8%, driven by demand for the new Samsung S8, Apple Watches and the FitBit Alta.