Very Group outperforms market over ‘challenging’ festive trading season
Very Group, the Liverpool-based online retailer, said toys, gifts and beauty, and electrical categories drove strong Christmas trading in a challenging market.
The former Littlewoods business said its UK year on year growth of 3.4% for the seven weeks to December 22, 2023, including the busy Black Friday period, was consistently ahead of the UK online non-food retail market, representing growth in market share, and helped deliver year on year group sales growth of 2.1%, including Littlewoods and Very Ireland.
Toys, gifts and beauty achieved year on year growth of 8.8%, while electricals were 7.4% ahead. Games consoles and perfume were among the best-selling items.
However, the Home category was down by 2.9% and fashion and sports were down by 3.9%, but with good growth in premium fashion which increased by 14.7%.
During the seven week period, 6.9 million items were processed at the group’s Skygate automated fulfilment centre, while 205,000 items were processed on November 27, the busiest day of Very’s peak period.
A new brand platform – ‘Let’s make it sparkle’ – was alson launched via a Christmas campaign that introduced the retailer’s new brand characters, Kerry, Terry and Cherry, the flamboyant flamingos.
Kantar ranked Very’s Christmas ad as the retailer’s most successful ad to date and the second most persuasive Christmas ad of 2023 across all industries.
The ad was also rated ‘exceptional’ by System1 across all measurement categories, consistently above the retail average and in the top 1.3% of all ads tracked.
Group chief executive, Lionel Desclée, said: “Our team delivered a brilliant range of products, strong pricing, an engaging new marketing campaign, and an improved online experience to give families everything they needed this Christmas.
“As expected in the current economic climate, consumers were on the lookout for amazing deals. We served these to existing customers and plenty of new customers during our Black Friday campaign with games consoles, wireless earbuds and perfume among our best sellers.”
He added: “Whilst we are pleased with these results, we also know that the year ahead will be challenging for all retailers.
“However, our operating model, which combines multi-category digital retail and flexible ways to pay, will remain resilient and continue to provide families with a one-stop-shop for everything they need.”
Last month the group successfully extended the ‘AS’ and ‘AJ’ notes of its UK securitisation facility to January 1, 2027, and increased them by £50m to £1.375bn without any changes to note margins.
Having also successfully refinanced the ‘B’, ‘C1’ and ‘C2’ notes in September 2023, the group’s total securitisation facility now stands at £1.635bn and has been operating for two decades.
