Hotel Chocolat boss Angus Thirlwell says the retailer’s digital push during the pandemic has left it in a much stronger position heading into the crucial Easter trading period than last year.

Thirwell says when the UK ground to a halt at the beginning of the crisis last March, Hotel Chocolat was left with only a narrow window to ramp up online operations to offset store closures, with the result that trading over Mother’s Day and Easter suffered. 

However, he now says a year into the crisis Hotel Chocolat’s ecommerce operations are “match fit” and with the distribution centre capacity it added in mid-2020, the retailer stands to deliver much stronger trading even with its store network closed for a second Easter in a row. 

“It was an evolving picture in the run up to Easter last year and it was very difficult to predict what was going to happen,” he says. “Then suddenly we had a closing window of two to three weeks to get all of our stock back to the [distribution] centre and then distributed from the centre into homes and, at the same time, communicate with our customers about what was going on. 

“Now we’re absolutely in a completely different situation. Our fulfilment centre and our team are very well prepared because we’ve had three lockdowns to get match fit. So we’re looking, looking very optimistically towards Mother’s Day and Easter.”

Hotel Chocolat posted another strong set of interim results today, reporting that revenue was up 11% to £102m, while underlying EBITDA edged up 2% to £25m in the 26 weeks to December 27, 2020.

In the period UK sales grew 12%, with 51% of total sales coming through its ecommerce direct-to-consumer channels. Despite the strength of Hotel Chocolat’s ecommerce offering during the crisis, Thirlwell says he can’t wait to reopen stores from April 12. 

“As far as Hotel Chocolat is concerned, we’re chomping at the bit to get open and we’re ready. We’re going to open all our locations [on April 12]. It can’t come a moment too soon, but it has to be done safely and in a way that promotes customer confidence to get back into stores.”

Thirwell says the crisis has only reinforced to him the important role that stores will continue to play in the growth of Hotel Chocolat. 

“We’ve mapped out eight ways that Hotel Chocolat can serve a household as a lifestyle brand, and of those eight there’s a good balance between what physical retail does best and what online does best,” he says. “We don’t see it as a zero sum game by any stretch of the imagination.”

Topics