Shoppers who received cash instead of Christmas gifts owing to December’s heavy snow helped John Lewis in Solihull achieve record figures in the seasonal sales.
The department store said the first day of clearance saw a 34 per cent surge on numbers for the same day the previous year, giving it the best-ever start to the sales.
And the first three days of clearance witnessed trade up around 32 per cent, putting the Solihull branch six percentage points ahead of the nationwide increase of 26.2 per cent.
Televisions and sofas proved particularly popular with bargain hunters as people sought to get their big-ticket purchases in before the VAT rise.
John Lewis Solihull managing director Richard Dearden said December’s artic weather was part of the reason the sales got off to such a good start.
“There are a few customers who got caught with the snow and were given money for Christmas as there wasn’t an opportunity to buy gifts,” he said. Therefore those customers who were given money have come out to spend that.”
Figures for the first nine days of the John Lewis sale came in at 14 per cent up on last year.
Despite the snow which blanketed the region throughout much of December, Mr Dearden said the store had seen several bumper weeks.
“We’ve had a few record weeks pre-Christmas despite the snow’s best efforts,” he said.
“On what would have been our biggest Saturday of the Christmas period a lot of customers chose to come out understandably because of the snow. We were down by about 30 per cent on that day, so there was a bit of pent-up demand.
“However in that week leading up to Christmas we were still 22 per cent up in that week.”
Harvey Nichols in Birmingham also saw a similar pattern with a “very strong” start to the sales, which came on the back of a good December despite the adverse weather conditions.
The store’s general manager Kevin Breese said: “I won’t say we were shocked, but we were pleasantly suprised for the end of Christmas. It’s been very strong and positive.
“We had a really good December full stop, even though the weather hurt a lot of other people.”
Meanwhile John Lewis’ sister firm Waitrose has capped its best ever Christmas trading period by announcing expansion plans that will include a new store in Stratford.
Across Britain the food and drinks retailer will open 39 stores in 2011, nearly doubling its rate of growth from the 20 it opened in 2010. The announcement follows the company’s best Christmas trading period in which sales grew by 8.9 per cent in the first 23 days of December.
But not everyone in the retail sector is feeling such a rosy post-Christmas glow.
Next, Britain’s No.2 fashion chain behind Marks & Spencer, said sales at shops open at least a year fell 6.1 per cent between August and Christmas Eve.
Many analysts are forecasting a tough 2011 for retailers, with a combination of public sector job losses, a weak housing market and the VAT increase conspiring to keep consumers away from the shops.
But Mr Dearden said he was “quietly optimistic” about trading in John Lewis’s Solihull branch after the euphoria of the sales had died down, outlining targets of four to five per cent growth on last year.
