NW John Lewis staff share £150m bonus pot

NEARLY 2,500 staff at three John Lewis stores in the North West will share a £151m bonus with colleagues around the country after a jump in profits at the retailer.

The employee-owned organisation has stores in Cheadle, the Trafford Centre and at the Liverpool One shopping centre, said it had had an “excellent” second half of  2009, and its stores are performing well now, but trading conditions are expected to get more difficult later this year.

The John Lewis Partnership, which also includes upmarket grocery business Waitrose, posted a 7.5% to £4.5bn. Operating profits, were up 9.7% to £307m.

Maggie Porteous, managing director of the John Lewis stores at Cheadle and the Trafford Centre said “Both stores performed really well in the second half with Trafford up 13% and Cheadle 5%.

“It was a tough year, but we benefited from some excellent ranges in fashion and saw a huge increase in the sales of televisions and set-top boxes after the digital switch-over in the Granada region.”

She said overall sales in the year saw Trafford – which is more focused on fashion than Cheadle, which is more furniture-focused – were up 6.9% while Cheadle was down 1.4%.

“Cheadle had a tough first half – no one was moving house and buying furniture, but it picked up later in the year.”

She said trading in the new financial year has started really strongly in both stores, with Trafford up 19.4% on last year and Cheadle up 7.9% in February.

“I can see this carrying on for a little while longer, but i think people will get more nervous as the general election nears and I think we’re going to see contraction of jobs in the public sector, and I think it’s going to get more difficult as the year goes on.”

She said £2.4m had been invested in the fashion floor at Cheadle, which will be reopened next week.

“We added extra staff and a call button service in the changing rooms, and we expect sales to rise as a result.”

John Holder, operations manager at the John Lewis store at Liverpool One said sales had exceeded budget by 6% in a “really good year.

“We saw some fantastic growth in fashion and home. We had the best Christmas on record in Liverpool and are doing well across all categories moving forward.”