Asos chases away blues with record Black Friday performance
Online retailer Asos beat the January blues with this morning’s trading statement as revenue grew 20 per cent across the group for the final four months of 2019.
The fashion firm said that the growth, which was consistent across all of its divisions, was due to record Black Friday sales.
Total sales hit £1.1bn, driven by increases in every geography of 20 per cent or higher, up from 895m in the same period in 2018.
In the UK, sales rose from £347.8m to £408.9m, whilst EU sales rose from £275.9m to £332.5m. The US continued to grow, reaching almost £140m this year.
Total orders also saw a 20 per cent increase to 27.7m, mainly due to strong performance through the peak holiday period.
Chief executive Nick Beighton said: “Asos has delivered an encouraging start to the year. Strong customer acquisition activity supported by robust operational performance has driven good momentum in all our markets.
“As we said in October, the focus for this year is to further enhance our capabilities and leverage the investments we have made. We remain confident in our ability to capture the substantial opportunity ahead of us.”
Richard Lim, chief executive of Retail Economics said: “These figures show that the retailer is back on track. They effectively leveraged their vast reach on social media to gain strong traction heading into Black Friday and the Christmas period.
“It’s abundantly clear that Black Friday has become critical in retailers’ success over the festive period. Savvy shoppers are bringing forward their purchases to take advantage of discounts for their Christmas shopping.
“This favours retailers with sophisticated online propositions and the operational capacity to cope with these peaks in demand.”
Asos said that its guidance for 2020 remained the same as previously stated. Shares in the retailer shot up nearly 10 per cent as markets opened.