Pure Beauty

Winners and losers in Christmas 2015 sales

Published: 12-Jan-2016

UK stores share Christmas trading results

Cosmetics Business rounds up the Christmas trading results from the UK’s leading beauty retailers…

Superdrug
Strong Christmas sales saw in store sales increase by 6.8% and online sales rise almost 50% at the beauty store. Sales were boosted by a popular fragrance promotion, with sales of perfume and aftershave up 12%.

Debenhams
Black Friday proved a hit at the previously troubled department store, with 220 orders placed every minute during peak hours. Like for like sales rose 1,9% in the 19 weeks to 9 January 2016 with beauty products proving a particular hit. Michael Sharp, outgoing Chief Executive at Debenhams, said: “We are particularly pleased with our performance in beauty and gifts, where we delivered a good result in store, along with strong online sales supported by robust systems, an ever improving supply chain and an imaginative and joined-up marketing campaign.”

House of Fraser
Sanpower-owned House of Fraser saw sales increase 5.3% year-on-year in the six weeks to 2 January. Black Friday was a particular hit, with sales up 40% on the previous year on the retailer’s biggest ever day of trading. Nigel Oddy, Chief Executive at the store, commented: “Our stores have performed well over the festive period, in particular our recently refurbished stores which showed strong growth in the final week before Christmas.”

John Lewis
The department store saw a 7% increase in sales for the six weeks leading to January 2016, with sales in fashion and beauty up 6%. Online dominated with bad weather slowing in-store sales. The store said 40% of all sales were conducted online.

Marks & Spencer
While the retailer’s food business grew, sales of general merchandise – which includes a revamped beauty hall – were down 5.8% overall. CEO Marc Bolland stepped down last week as the results emerged.

Poundland
After years of impressive growth, the discounter saw a disappointing Christmas after opening many new stores and acquiring the 99p Stores chain. Sales at established stores dropped 3% and Poundland warned that its annual profits would not be as high as once expected.

Sainsbury's
The retailer was the only one of the UK’s big four supermarkets to increase sales and market share over the Christmas trading period.Sales were up 0.8% in the 12 weeks leading up to 3 January 2016.

Tesco
The UK’s biggest retailer is said to have seen a 0.3% decrease on last year’s 6-week Christmas period. However, 3,300 of its stores have apparently reported better than expected sales.

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