Black Friday powers John Lewis’ best week ever December 2, 2014 John Lewis has reported its best-ever week for sales in its 150 year history, thanks to the power of Black Friday. The sales bonanza, which the department store had invested heavily into, resulted in sales of £179.1m, up 21.8 per cent year-on-year, and 56.8 per cent up on the previous week. It easily [...]
Focus on St James’s: The home of the English gentleman July 9, 2015 In many ways, St James’s resembles the City. Sure, there aren’t any skyscrapers and it’s not half as old, but it’s SW1’s commercial hub and barely anyone lives there. As proud purveyors of men’s garments since the Victorian age, it boasts such prestigious names along Jermyn Street as Turnbull & Asser, Alfred Dunhill, while St [...]
The Crossrail effect: Fares between Liverpool Street and Shenfield cut by up to 40pc as TfL Rail takes £5m hit May 26, 2015 Essex commuters will be the first to benefit from London’s Crossrail train service, with fare cuts of up to 40 per cent introduced this weekend. Although the east-west London line will not be travelling through the capital’s newly-dug tunnels until 2019, some services between Liverpool Street and Shenfield will be run as TfL Rail from [...]
The NHS isn’t unique – and we’ll never fix its many flaws until we realise this June 25, 2015 As an undergraduate student, I spent an Erasmus semester in a small town in Spain. During a flat viewing, the landlady who showed me around pointed at the microwave in the kitchen, and said: “This is a microwave. Do you know what a microwave is?” I got a bit confused by the question, which sounded [...]
N Brown sales slow as catalogue group shapes up for digital age September 16, 2014 N BROWN sales slowed in the first half as the home shopping group shakes off its image as traditional mail-order business and invests in wooing more online shoppers. Sales fell 0.6 per cent in the six months to 30 August, dragged down by a 3.2 per cent decline in the second quarter. Chief executive Angela [...]
Selfridges invests £40m on e-commerce starting with website relaunch September 30, 2014 Selfridges is investing more than £40m to improve its e-commerce offering within the next five years beginning with the relaunch of its website. The luxury retailer is updating selfridges.com for the first time since the launch of its e-commerce site in 2010 designed to improve the customer journey and increase sales. The redesigned site which [...]
Ladies who don’t lunch: Sue Round talks fund management, sentimentality and being broke March 26, 2015 Buongiorno signora!” bellows the exuberant waiter at Bolton’s, an Italian tucked away in an unassuming corner near Leadenhall Market. “Hello, hellooo” comes the response. I know Sue Round has arrived, even before I see her. She greets me warmly, as if we’ve known each other for years. In fact, I’ve met Sue only once before [...]
Flying economic: The 10 holiday destinations where the pound stretches the furthest January 9, 2015 It's January, and those post-holiday blues can be pretty tough. But they say the best way to shrug it off is to book a holiday, and although the pound's strength is hammering exporters, it offers holidaymakers an extra incentive to get away. And with oil prices tumbling, airline tickets are dropping to bargain basement [...]
The Chinese city of Chongqing has created the world’s first lane for mobile phone-using pedestrians September 15, 2014 Anyone who has spent time in a city is familiar with the frustrations of phone zombies – the strange, hunched figures absent-mindedly wandering into oncoming pedestrians' paths because they're too busy using their phones to look where they're going. Now the Chinese city of Chongqing has solved the problem, by creating the world's first lane [...]
London Fashion Week Spring 2015: What are the highlights? September 12, 2014 Julian Assange may have cancelled his London Fashion Week appearance, but we reckon there are still plenty of reasons to attend. The Wikileaks founder had been scheduled to model for Vivienne Westwood's son Ben Westwood at a show in the Ecuadorian embassy, but it's been postponed to next season's show in February. But [...]