Mobile traffic drives up sales at Shop Direct
SHOP DIRECT, the home-shopping group owned by the billionaire Barclay brothers, yesterday said sales through mobile devices such as the ipad and smart phones helped boost annual sales.
The company behind Littlewoods, isme and very.co.uk reported that overall sales grew 0.4 per cent to £1.6bn in the year to 30 June.
Online sales grew by six per cent in the year and the group said 75 per cent of total sales were completed online.
“A third of our website traffic is now generated from mobile devices and that figure continues to grow rapidly across all of our brands,” chief executive Alex Baldcock said.
“Looking ahead, we will start to see real incremental growth in sales from mobile as we continue to draw on our unparalleled knowledge of customer needs and shopping habits.”
The sales lift helped to narrow losses in the period by 37 per cent to £57.7m compared with the previous year while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation jumped 66 per cent to £108.9m. It has also extended its click and collect service with free next day delivery to over 5,000 stores.