N Brown pleased with festive performance

HOME shopping group N Brown fashioned a 3.6% increase in sales in the trading period including Christmas.

The Manchester company, which runs the JD Williams, Marisota, Simply Be and Jacamo catalogues and websites, said the migration of shoppers to the Internet was continuing and online sales now represent 39% of the total.

Chief executive Alan White said he was pleased with the performance given several challenges in the period.

“We’ve battled through pretty well – we had the postal strikes and then the bad weather last year. Clearly home shopping does better in bad weather because at least people can shop – but it does slow down the process of customers getting their catalogues and we do think we would have done better without the bad weather.”

He said this year’s sales rise combined with last year’s 8.8% like-for-like number “stood comparison with the best retailers.”

N Brown said sales were “particularly encouraging” from the footwear, menswear, home and gift product ranges.

The group’s newer titles, Marisota and Jacamo, saw the fastest growth of all the customer groups.

Mr White said he was pleased with the early progress of High & Mighty – the retail chain and website it bought in September
.
“We’re pleased with the development of the business so far, and have some ambitious plans to develop that business over the next couple of years.”

He said he was satisfied with progress of the Simply Be business in Germany – which has now been up and running for 12 months.

“It’s pretty much where the business plan said it would. Clearly the German consumer is not in the best of health – like the UK – so it was not exactly a benign time to launch”

He said a launch in the US was still on the cards, and market research there is showing “positive opportunities.”

In its trading statement N Brown said the outlook for this year was “uncertain”, but said the group would meet profit targets for the year.