The Entertainer grows multichannel
Multichannel toy retailer The Entertainer says it’s seeing year-on-year double-digit growth in its online sales, thanks to a number of recently added initiatives. For the year ended January 2011, the privately owned company reported a sales rise of 8.4 percent to £71 million. Profits dipped slightly from £1.4 million to £1 million, but multichannel director Duncan Grant says this was better than expected, as the business had budgeted for a profit of £750,000. The decline, says Grant, is mainly due to investment in the business, which included a warehouse move and an aggressive store-opening programme. Last year, the business relocated the warehouse servicing its stores from Amersham in Buckinghamshire to Swindon. Subsequently, the warehouse serving the company’s online arm was moved from a short-lease warehouse into the larger, more-sophisticated Amersham hub. Web sales now account for 10 percent of total sales, and Grant says growth has been phenomenal, “
JohnLewis.com recently saw 27 percent growth, we’re beating that,” he says. Driving online growth, says Grant, is a wider product range, a better customer service, and a focus on availability—reducing out-of- stocks, especially at Christmas.
Other growth drivers have been customers’ growing take-up of store home delivery. In place since 2009, the service enables stores to place orders on
behalf of customers for delivery to their homes. Building on that for 2010, The Entertainer began offering a click and collect service. Trialled in June 2010 in just a handful of stores, the service was rolled out to the entire network by the following month. “In just over a year— august-to-august—click and collect sales have doubled,” says Grant, adding that the service was instrumental at Christmas. What’s more, Christmas 2010 was a catalyst for further development, says Grant. The bad weather experienced last December “put the business under pressure and showed us where we could improve,” particularly in back-end processes. For the current fiscal year, both the stores and the web are showing positive like-for-like growth and Grant says that the company has much up its sleeve for the new year. Among the most ambitious is the aim of reducing the click and collect turnaround time from two to three days, to just 30 minutes.
Next plans entry into Russia, China and Japan
International online sales at homewares and apparel retailer Next rocketed during the first six months of the year, “much faster than anticipated”, said Next’s chief executive Lord Wolfson in a statement. As a result, he now expects full-year online sales outside the UK to reach £32 million, up from £10 million last year. Sales were particularly strong in Germany, USA, Ireland, Australia and Poland and Next now plans to set up online stores for Russia, China and Japan within the next six months, fulfilling all orders from the UK. Even more important than launching more sites in their native language and local
currency, says Lord Wolfson, is improving international delivery times. Next has set out a timetable for improving its delivery promise. For example, it currently offers free delivery to Australia with a timeframe of seven to 10 days. Within a year, Next aims to deliver to Australia in just four days.
Overall, Next saw sales reach £1.57 billion in the six months ended July 2011—a rise of 3.6 percent on the same period in 2010. Pretax profit was up 8.5 percent to £228 million. Sales in Next’s direct arm Next Directory were up 15.1 percent to £486.7 million, with profit up 11.3 percent to £112.8 million.
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