House of Fraser reports strong Christmas sales

House of Fraser, part of the Highland Group Holdings in its update on the Christmas trading period for the six weeks to January 2, 2016 said that starting from the week of Black Friday, the company witnessed strong demand. Like-for-like sales (ex VAT) for the period increased 5.3 percent against the comparative period last year and 16.7 percent against 2014.

Commenting on the performance, Nigel Oddy, CEO of House of Fraser said, “We are delighted with our Christmas trading performance both in terms of sales growth and margin improvement. This year, we saw a very strong start to the key Christmas season with Black Friday being particularly strong online, with sales up 40 percent on the year – our biggest online day ever. Our stores have also performed well over the festive period, in particular our recently refurbished stores which showed strong growth in the final week before Christmas.”

The company said that on Black Friday itself, total sales went up 10 percent on the previous year, with the Group’s biggest ever online sales day, up over 40 percent on last year. Seven days before Christmas like-for-like sales (ex VAT) were up 6 percent with positive performance from both online up 61.8 percent and ‘bricks and mortar’ stores, up 2.2 percent, with 12 stores delivering positive sales. House Brand sales were up 4.5 percent.

With the continued momentum in the week after Christmas, like-for-like sales (ex VAT) increased 6.8 percent in the seven days after Christmas.