Beaverbrooks sparkles amid retail gloom

BEAVERBROOKS, the North West jewellery retailer has announced strong profit growth, but expects this Christmas to be “extremely challenging”.

The company, which has 65 shops nationally and is owned by the Adlestone family, saw profits climb 32% to £4.9m in the 26 weeks to the end of February. Turnover in the same period grew 7.2% to £86.9m.

Managing director Mr Adlestone said he was not expecting this festive trading period to be as strong as Christmas 2010 for a number of reasons.

“People are just not spending – there’s obviously a lack of confidence among consumers, but we can take a long term view and continue to invest in the business in difficult times.”

He said recent surges in the price of gold had made trading even more challenging.

Last year the St Anne’s-on -Sea-based company its shop in Ashton-Under-Lyne, and future “pruning” of the estate is a possibility.

Mr Adlestone said: “Our format has moved away from market towns like Ashton – it no longer fits our profile as high footfall locations with a bigger concentration of shoppers

“There’s inevitably going to be pressure on tertiary locations like Ashton, Stocktport and Altrincham, which before the Trafford Centre opened have were reasonably good locations, but have since seen trade sucked away and it’s now difficult to get investment in there.”

He said reviewing shop leases as they expire is a “prudent and and sensible” step.

“To protect the strength of the company we may have to prune occasionally.”

During the last year, Beaverbrooks – consistently ranked among the best companies to work for – maintained its record for charity support in the last year, giving £434,907 to good causes.

“It is something we are really passionate about. We support our staff across the branch network by supporting their charities by matching what they raise. I think we’ve supported over 200 good causes as a result.”