• Shop Direct “on track for another record year of sales and profit”
  • Very.co.uk delivers Christmas like-for-like sales surge of 17% and on track to generate £1bn in sales this year
  • Mobile accounted for 63% of Christmas online sales at Very.co.uk
  • Clothing and Footwear sales up 6% “despite unusually warm weather”
  • Black Friday sales up 64%

Etailer Shop Direct has reported a strong Christmas, helped by its m-commerce experience, as sales advanced 6% in the seven weeks to December 25.

shop direct

The Very.co.uk owner said the performance puts it “significantly ahead of the market”. It also noted the sales growth builds on last year’s “strong comparative results”.

Shop Direct said its personalised offer and its mobile shopping experience helped drive the performance. Shop Direct said it is on track for another record year of sales and profit.

Very.co.uk like-for-likes increased 17% and the brand is on track to generate £1b in sales in its full year.

The group attracted 82 million site visits over Christmas, up 8% year on year. Shop Direct said it has benefited from its “100% digital focus, no distraction from catalogues, no distraction from physical stores”.

At Very.co.uk sales via mobile devices grew 32% over the festive period and accounted for 63% of online sales, “significantly ahead of the market”.

The group reported clothing and footwear sales up 6% “despite unusually warm weather”.

Black Friday sales jumped 64%.

Shop Direct said it will invest more into personalisation this year and has ploughed money into combining “big data with cutting edge technology and continuous experimentation to keep improving the personalised experience it offers customers”.

It has today unveiled a new “ground-breaking” £50m financial services personalisation programme, in partnership with IBM.

Shop Direct group chief executive Alex Baldock said: “Christmas 2015 was a record-breaker for Shop Direct, and we’re pleased to see our momentum continue to build.

“Received wisdom is that every retailer should be multichannel. We don’t buy that. We like being a digital pureplay. It allows us to keep things simple and focus our energy on mobile innovation, which has been a big factor in our record peak trading.

“Looking forward to 2016, we’ll stick to delivering our strategy of making good things easily accessible to more people. In particular, 2016 will be the year of personalisation for Shop Direct. Personalisation is at the heart of making the shopping experience ever easier for our customers, enabled by heavy investment in big data and technology which we expect to make a big impact in 2016.

“On the back of a strategy that’s working and a successful peak, we’re now well on track to deliver another record-breaking year of sales and profit.”