Boohoo.com and Asos are both this week celebrating fast growth in sales.
The two fashion pureplays both reported healthy performances in trading updates to the city.
Boohoo.com said in a trading update to the city on Wednesday that sales of £139.8m in the year to February 28 were 27% ahead of the same time last year, or 31% when currency fluctuations were discounted. UK sales of £94.3m were 33% ahead of last year, while rest of Europe sales were 39% ahead, and rest of the world sales 7% ahead.
In the final two months of the year alone, revenue of £21.9m was 22% up on the same period last year, with UK sales of £14.5m 13% ahead.
Boohoo said visits from mobile devices now accounted for almost half of visits to its responsive website, launched in September. Mobile conversion, it said, had improved by more than 40% in the last quarter of the year. During the year the company invested in warehouse infrastructure, installing a warehouse management system and extending its warehouse, scheduled for completion in April.
The company said it had focused on customer conversion and margin in the two months to February 2015, holding marketing spend at 10% of sales over a promotional period. Market share, it said, had reached 2.17% in February 2015, according to Hitwise. That’s 12% ahead of the same time last year.
“We continue to build our business for the long term, as we stated at our IPO last year, and our clear objective is to deliver sustainable growth,” said joint chief executives Mahmud Kamani and Carol Kane. “We remain absolutely focussed on execution and are increasing our marketing spend in full year 2016 to drive momentum in the business.”
A day later, Asos reported that total retail sales of £290.1m were 19% ahead of UK sales of £126.5m in the three months to February 28. UK sales of £126.6m were 30% ahead of the same time last year, while US sales were 24% ahead, EU sales 13% and rest of the world sales 4% ahead.
Chief executive Nick Robertson said: “Retail sales for the three months to 28 February 2015 grew by +19% (+22% on a constant currency basis), with strong growth continuing in the UK at +30%. We have also seen encouraging momentum in our international markets during the quarter at +12% (+16% on a constant currency basis) following the successful roll out of our zonal pricing capability and our planned price investments.
“Our investments in our warehouse and IT platforms are on track. We expect profit before tax for the full year to be in line with market expectations.”
