Festive sales rise for The Fragrance Shop
THE Fragrance Shop, the UK’s largest independent perfume retailer, has reported like-for-like sales growth of 5% for the Christmas trading period.
The privately-owned company based at Trafford Park, said including the contribution from new stores, total sales in the five weeks to December 25 were 11.8% ahead of the previous year.
Top sellers included Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle; Paco Rabanne’s 1 Million, Lady Million and Invictus; and YSL’s newest launch, Black Opium.
Multichannel retailing helped fuel sales, the company said, with growth from customers using its Click and Collect service to place orders online and collect in-store.
The Fragrance Shop’s ‘Try It First’ service, which sees customers receive a fragrance sample with their order, which they can try before opening the main bottle – so they can return the main item if they don’t like it – is also proving popular.
Adding an extra 18 stores to its growing portfolio this year, the Manchester based retailer opened its 171st store in December – and won a prestigious Pure Beauty ‘Best Store Design’ award for its new concept flagship, Indulge Fragrance Boutique, based at the Intu Trafford Centre, seeing off competition from Tesco and Superdrug.
Chief executive Sanjay Vadera said: “Our drive for innovation in the fragrance retailing industry has seen us launch a one hour ‘Click and Collect’ service while expanding our store portfolio. Our continued passion for fragrance, with highly trained staff both in our stores and our dedicated customer service team, really does make us first for fragrance.”
“In the multi-channel age, customers still want to try out the fragrance they are buying for a loved one, which is why services like Try It First are proving so popular.”
The company began with a single store in 1995 and after opening 18 stores in 2014 now has 171 shops across the UK with plans to continue to grow its store portfolio in 2015 with 25 new stores. In the year to March 31, 2014, annual sales climbed by 11.2% to £90.1m.
