John Lewis just had the biggest week in its trading history with nearly £200m in sales thanks to Black Friday
The jury may be out on the winner of the Christmas ad battle, but John Lewis has other reasons for festive cheer.
The retailer has just revealed sales of £199.8m, up 6.5 per cent year-on-year, for the week up to 26 November. Spurred on by Black Friday and its price matching efforts on the "Never Knowingly Undersold" policy, John Lewis said this marked "the biggest ever week in John Lewis's trading history", complete with its biggest ever day.
One guess for which day that was. Black Friday, 25 November, delivered in style as the retailer's top day for sales.
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In terms of categories, electricals had an 11 per cent year-on-year increase, with shoppers snapping up Sonos Play 1 speakers and GHD hair straighteners. Fashion sales were up 4.6 per cent.
John Lewis' Black Friday event fell across two trading weeks, from Thursday to Monday.
With retailers all wheeling out a host of deals, customers had their choice of where to flash the cash. But some deals weren't quite as good as they seemed: while Amazon had plenty of appealing offers, some of the products it had on sale were available for the same price at John Lewis.
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Springboard said high street had something of a renaissance this year for Black Friday, as British consumers sought out an experience with their shopping trip. (No word on whether that imagined experience included fighting over the last TV on sale in a store though.)
High street footfall was up 2.8 per cent for Friday and 1.2 per cent on Saturday, compared to last year.
And Visa revealed that UK shoppers spent more than £2bn using its cards on Black Friday this year, up 13 per cent on last year's, with half the spend made online.