Record Black Friday for Boots boosts first quarter performance

Nottingham-based retailer Boots has posted record-breaking Black Friday revenues with online sales powering the performance.

The company said it delivered a “strong” performance” in its first quarter, with an eleventh consecutive quarter of growth and retail sales up by almost 10%.

The results were in part driven by a strong Black Friday period, which saw boots.com achieve its biggest ever month of sales in November and its biggest ever day of sales on Black Friday. Store sales were also strong, up over 7% in Black Friday week.

Electrical Beauty, Skincare, Premium Beauty, No7 and Fragrance were the top performing categories, with a bottle of fragrance sold every second of Black Friday week.

In stores, footfall continued to grow in the quarter, up 7%, as more customers chose to shop at Boots.

Digital sales now contribute 19.2% of total retail sales, with boots.com sales growing 17.5%. Use of the Boots App continues to grow at pace and it now has 7.2 million active users.

Christmas sales performance will be reported on as part of Q2 earnings later in the year, however Boots says that early indications suggest a “strong” Christmas period with sales from Black Friday week until the New Year beating last year’s performance.

Seb James, managing director of Boots UK and ROI, said: “I am very encouraged by the way in which people are responding to the changes that we have made, especially in our digital and beauty businesses. It is really good to see that market share has grown for the eleventh quarter in a row showing that more customers are choosing Boots. This strong start to the year, together with a good Christmas, sets us up well for another good year and I would like to thank most sincerely all of my colleagues for their hard work and resilience over this vital trading period.”