Boohoo.com today reported online sales of £67.2m in the first half of its financial year, 31% up on the same time last year.
The growth came as the fashion pureplay introduced a new responsive website to improve access from the mobile devices that account for 57% of visits.
Foreign language websites were also rolled out in Spain, Germany and Italy, taking its total number of international sites to 13.
The fashion pureplay saw strong growth in the UK, where sales grew by 47%, and Europe (43%) but said sales in the rest of the world had fallen by 11% – or grown by 1% at constant currency exchange rates. Pre-tax profits grew by 23% to £4.5m in the six months to August 31.
In the first half, boohoo fulfilled 2.7m orders, 40% up on the same time last year, and dispatched 7.2m items. Dresses were the most popular item, at 34% of sales, while sales of women’s tops grew by 63% to represent 15% of sales. By contrast, menswear, first introduced last autumn, now represents 3.6% of total sales.
Joint chief executives Mahmud Kamani and Carol Kane said they were delighted with results in Boohoo’s first six months as a listed company. “We have grown revenues whilst continuing to lay the foundations for future growth,” they said. “Since our IPO we have invested in the business significantly. Developments include the completed new mezzanine floor in the Burnley warehouse, a new warehouse management system and opening foreign language sites in Spain, Germany and most recently Italy as well as the launch of a fully responsive site to improve our mobile offering.”
Looking to the future they said the focus would continue to be on widening international markets while growing domestic sales. The company is to launch a pop up shop in New York to support word of mouth campaigns there while also working to increase awareness in Australia. In the UK it will move to a 9pm cut off for next-day delivery in the autumn, thanks to its new warehouse management system, and it will also offer more Sunday deliveries. Future plans, it said, included the use of alternative collection and return points, such as Collect+, and it would use text messaging to enable customers to amend the place and time of delivery while a parcel was on its way to them.
The company has also widened its social media presence.
