John Lewis sales surge 18.4% boosted by Black Friday deals

John Lewis recorded sales up 18.4% year on year to £147m and up 31.4% week on week.

Online trade surged 35.7% on the year and was up 19.4% on the previous biggest week. It also broke its record for a single day’s trading on Johnlewis.com on Black Friday and mobile orders tripled the record for a single day.

The department store retailer revealed that online traffic from midnight to 8am rocketed 323% against a normal Friday in November. This leapt to a traffic spike on m-commerce up 1,340% year on year, as commuters used iPads and mobiles to check out the deals.

John Lewis said electricals sales for the week jumped 41.5%, driven by iPads, TVs and PlayStation 4s, with one selling every four seconds in the early hours of Friday morning. Fashion sales rose 16.6%.

Stores were boosted by Black Friday promotions and price-matching a rival retailer’s event and “several” branches recorded record sales.

John Lewis online director Mark Lewis said: “Any doubt over whether UK consumers are interested in Black Friday has been cast aside as record sales were notched up online and via mobile devices for John Lewis.”

But he doesn’t expect today’s Cyber Monday to have the same impact.

He added: “Looking ahead to this week, we predict that today will see customers go online to continue their Christmas shopping in categories beyond technology on ‘Cyber Sunday’. Combined with the push seen on Friday, we are seeing a marked change from previous years when the first Monday in December has traditionally seen the highest online traffic, to more frequent peaks of demand during the festive season.”

John Lewis also revealed it has partnered with Hotel Chocolat, which will pen a cocoa bar cafe in its Edinburgh store in early 2014.