Very Group talks of resilient Christmas trading as sales edge upwards

Earlier this week we reported on The Very Group’s latest Q1 accounts filing (the three months to late September) and now the business has released a Christmas trading statement saying the six week to 27 December were “resilient” and were “supported by sales growth in higher-margin categories”.

The company’s flagship Very UK operation delivered retail sales growth of 1.9% year-on-year, driven by strong performances in standout categories such as Home (+7.9%) and Toys and Beauty (+6.4%).

Including the legacy Littlewoods business and Very Ireland, group retail sales declined slightly (by 0.4%) for the period.

Best-sellers included Nintendo Switch 2, perfumes and Meta Quest 3S with beauty gifts sets and coffee machines also performing well. By brand, Jimmy Choo and Calvin Klein perfumes did well, as did Beauty Works gift sets.

Overall, Black Friday was the group’s best trading day since the pandemic. Some 209,000 items were processed at Skygate, the group’s automated fulfilment centre, on 28 November and 3 million items were processed during Black Friday week – beating last year’s busiest week of 1.2 million items.

CEO Robbie Feather hailed the top-line growth at Very UK despite a “challenging and competitive market”.

He didn’t share any news on how Fashion performed during the Black Friday and festive period, however, and we have to assume it didn’t do as well as might have been hoped.

In the Q1 filing earlier this week, the company had said that Fashion and Sports combined declined 1% in a tough market but, Sports alone was strong. Parts of the Fashion market were buoyant as well with a 30.1% increase in casual womenswear sales during Q1.