Lockdown leads to record performance for homewares chain

Roni Tuominen

Danish furniture and home furnishings brand, JYSK has announced record results in the UK & Ireland during the financial year 2019/2020.

The retailer, which has stores in Liverpool, St Helens, Ellesmere Port, Manchester, Bolton, Blackburn and Rochdale, said total sales reached €41m, an increase of 74% on 2018/2019.

It reported a positive EBIT in the first full fiscal year since merging the UK and Irish businesses, as well as a record €2.9M (69%) improvement on results for fiscal year 2019/2020.

Despite a challenging year for the retail market, with forced store closures during lockdown periods, more than 860,000 customers – a 55% year-on-year increase – in the UK & Ireland chose to shop at the Scandinavian retail chain, confirming a UK-wide trend that has seen homewares sales soar.

While the challenges many retailers faced during 2020 were mostly financial, the behind the scenes logistics were also tested for JYSK as it received a soar in demand.

With shopping choices limited, many customers turned to e-commerce, almost a quarter (24%) of JYSK’s total annual orders were made online.

This sudden increase meant that capacity at warehouses and distribution companies were stretched due to lack of warning of store closures and minimal time to prepare for the shift to online orders.

The company rapidly responded to keep up with the demand and, as a result, is pleased to announce there were no redundancies or staff layoffs, despite store closures as a result of the pandemic.

In fact, increasing sales and improving trends as the year progressed has led to an increase in the number of employees since stores reopened during the Summer.

Country manager JYSK UK & Ireland, Roni Tuominen, said: “Whilst it has been a tough year for retail in many ways, we are very pleased with the results announced today. In Ireland, we were able to contribute positive EBIT after just one full financial year.

“Whilst the EBIT result is not yet at our target levels, to be able to achieve this positive result alongside the significant level of investment and expansion we have done is quite remarkable.”

The company, which announced the merger of JYSK UK & Ireland earlier this year, said that synergies achieved, would help to improve overall profitability for the company.

“We’ve seen great improvements and positive trends in the UK towards the latter part of this year following the merger of the UK & Irish organisation,” added Roni.

“This turnaround project that started in June has already resulted in significant growth on our sales and customer numbers. UK customer numbers alone grew by 55% compared to last year.”

With such positive results, and despite the challenges of the current pandemic, Roni Tuominen said that JYSK will continue to push forward with the expansion plans of opening a further five stores in the UK and eight in Ireland this financial year. A Liverpool store in Hunts Cross opened last month.

“We are very confident in both the UK & Ireland market and we will continue with our expansion plans over the next 12 months. The appetite is there for home furnishing products amongst our customers, perhaps now more than ever as the nation continues to spend more at time at home and invest in creating comfortable, ‘hygge’ (fun) inspired interiors that are synonymous with our Danish heritage.”

The positive results from JYSK in the UK & Ireland are part of a greater success story, as JYSK, which in total operates more than 2,900 stores in 51 countries, announced record global turnover of €4.1bn.

Jysk now operates at total of 30 stores across the UK and Ireland, employing 296 staff.

Close