This article is from the source 'bbc' and was first published or seen on . It will not be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/business/8440511.stm
The article has changed 36 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
Previous version
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
Next version
Version 0 | Version 1 |
---|---|
Sales at John Lewis reach record | |
(about 8 hours later) | |
The John Lewis department store chain has reported its best-ever Christmas season sales. | The John Lewis department store chain has reported its best-ever Christmas season sales. |
Like-for-like sales were up 12.7% from last year to £500.8m ($800m) in the five weeks to 2 January 2010. | |
The group said it had sold goods worth more than £100m in four of the five weeks over the festive trading period. | The group said it had sold goods worth more than £100m in four of the five weeks over the festive trading period. |
This was thanks to what the store described as "excellent" Christmas and clearance trading. Its sister business, Waitrose, also did well. | |
In the John Lewis stores, fashion sales were up 22%, home goods increased 19% and electrical and home technology sales jumped 11%. | |
In a statement, John Lewis managing director Andy Street said that the five-week period had seen "a number of records broken" for the company. | |
"We beat our previous biggest ever week from 2007 in early December," he said. | |
But Mr Street warned that UK High Streets still had a long way to go before sales returned to the levels reached before the economic downturn struck. | |
"The figures are good but that's probably not going to be sustained. It's a purple patch," he told the BBC. | |
"Looking into 2010 we think that with higher taxes coming in we're not going to see these figures continue." | |
Separate figures from market data firm Experian suggested that, for many retailers, there was a Boxing day sales rush that made up for a disappointing pre-Christmas run up, with a record number of shoppers hitting the shops on 26 and 27 December. | |
Experian said there had been an 18.5% jump in the number of shoppers compared with the previous year. | |
John Lewis did not open its High Street stores on Boxing Day. | |