boohoo.com today it continued to invest in technology and the customer experience, as it reported sales up by 106% in the first half of its financial year. Pre-tax profits of £20.3m in the six months to August 31 were 41% ahead of the same time last year.
Joint chief executives Mahmud Kamani and Carol Kane said sales of all its brands, including the recently-acquired PrettyLittleThing brand as well as Nasty Gal, had grown strongly both at home and abroad.
They said: “We have continued to make significant investment in IT infrastructure and warehouse capacity to ensure stable and sustained execution of the group’s growth strategy and plans are progressing well for the next phase of longer term requirements for warehouse capacity.
“We will continue to invest in the customer proposition, further develop our brands and maximise the considerable opportunities that a global marketplace affords us. The strong performance in the first half-year and our expectations for the second half have given us confidence to raise guidance for the full year.”
Here are some of the multichannel highlights at the fast fashion retailer, a Top150 retailer in IRUK Top500 research.
The customer
Boohoo says it now sells to customers from almost every country in the world. During the last year, active customer numbers grew by 29% to 5.8m, with website sessions reaching 158m – 20% up on the previous year. Order frequency stayed unchanged, with customers shopping with it 2.11 times in a year, on average.
Conversion rate to sale rose from 3.9% to 4.1% of sessions. On social media, the retailer has 4.4m followers on Instagram, 3.1m Facebook likes, 0.5m Twitter followers and 3.7m Twitter views.
Some 70% of online sessions now take place from a mobile device.
Web-chat services have been extended from 5pm to 9pm in response to customer demand.
Technology
boohoo.com is in the process of moving its websites to a new platform that it says has reduced operating costs while also boosting stability and flexibility.
Mobile device use has also risen, to 70% of sessions.
Logistics
The retailer said it was rolling our free returns to more international markets. In the US, customers now get a refund once the return is in the hands of the delivery service, while in the UK customers now use log their returns via a portal and print their returns label.
