Sosandar growth continues as customers buy into higher-priced categories

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jan 10, 2023

Fast-growing womenswear e-tailer Sosandar has reported another strong sales leap with the three months to 31 December (Q3) seeing revenue jumping 30% against the previous year to reach £11.6 million.

The company said it saw strong revenue growth across all of its sales channels and hit a new record for third-party partners. It was also the fifth consecutive quarter of profitability for the business.

And despite a number of retailers reporting sales rises that lagged inflation, it appears to have countered price rises with average order values of more than £106, up 11% year-on-year. It said this reflected customers buying higher-priced items and categories such as outerwear, tailoring and occasionwear.

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This all helped the gross margin improve to 56.8% from 55.8% a year ago and it was also better than the first half of the current financial year, when the margin had been 54.4%. 

“Delivering this performance despite the challenging consumer backdrop is testament to the company's agility, underpinned by a unique quality product offering, highly effective marketing strategy and increasing brand awareness across its target market,” it said.

The group's fast-tracked development of specific product categories “resonated extremely well with customers,” we’re told, “resulting in all identified lines meeting or exceeding management expectations”. 

It was particularly good news that during Q3, every single product category saw growth, with knitwear, formal tailoring, coats and partywear performing “exceptionally well” throughout the winter season.

And while the company said that it's aware of the wider challenges out there, its performance so far suggests that its strategy is on the right track.

CO-CEOs Ali Hall and Julie Lavington said in a prepared statement: “We are pleased to be reporting another record trading performance. The momentum built in H1 has continued. As a result of our strategic initiatives, we had a record number of visits to Sosandar.com in the quarter and we have seen our customers investing in higher-value items throughout the winter season.

“Our agile business model, expanded product offering and ever-increasing brand awareness has allowed us to deliver what our customers want.

“Whilst the macro-economic environment remains challenging, we continue to demonstrate that our differentiated model is capable of achieving sustained profitable growth. The strength of our brand and product range continues to be recognised by third-party retailers and as a result we are really excited by a number of new opportunities for growth being presented to us across various sales channels and territories.”