John Lewis online sales reach £1 billion ahead of schedule
John Lewis revealed today it has notched up online annual sales of £1 billion for the first time – and a year earlier than planned.
The group, part of the John Lewis Partnership, said sales through johnlewis.com soared 41 per cent to £959 million in 2012 and accounted for a quarter of trade.
The deapartment store giant is the latest retailer to highlight the shift towards online shopping after Tesco said last week that it was scrapping more than 100 planned UK store developments under aims to focus more on internet sales.
The UK's biggest supermarket said online sales reached £3bn after rising 13 per cent in the year to February 23.
Department store Debenhams also hailed a surge in online sales – up 46 per cent in the six months to March 2 – which helped offset falling high street trade amid the snow and adverse weather earlier this year.
John Lewis, which has stores in Tamworth and Solihull and is opening a new store opposite Birmingham New Street station in 2014, had expected online sales to reach the £1bn mark in 2014, but IT director Paul Coby said the group was seeing "an unprecedented pace of online growth". It is launching a new website to further build on its online success, having spent £40m and three years on the project.
The John Lewis Partnership also owns Waitrose, which has stores in Lichfield, Stourbridge and Penn, Wolverhampton.
It emerged last week that despite Debenhams' growth of the online business, stores still accounted for the majority of profits and it is planning to open new stores to build a multi-channel offer for customers.
The company has 155 department stores in the UK but will open 17 more over the next five years.
