E-commerce continued to dominate sales in the first six months of 2014 for N Brown Group Plc, one of the biggest direct marketers of apparel, housewares and related categories in the United Kingdom.
Mobile is contributing mightily to N Brown’s online business,accounting for 46% of all web traffic, up by 14% year over year. Traffic from tablets accounted for 17.5%, smartphones 14.5% and desktop computers 68%, the company says.
For the first six months of 2014 ended Aug. 30, N Brown, which owns and operates JD Williams and about 30 other brands and is No. 36 in the Internet Retailer 2014 Europe 500,reported:
- Online sales represented 58% of total sales, or 236.2 million pounds ($376.5 million). N Brown did not report web sales for the first six months of 2013, but its prior year report indicated the web accounted for 56% of total sales. Based on that data, first-half 2014 e-commerce sales were up by 3.0% from 229.4 million pounds ($365.6 million) in the first six months of 2013.
- Catalog sales represented 39% of total sales, or 158.8 million pounds ($253.2 million), down by 10.2% from 176.8 million pounds ($281.8 million).
- Store sales made up 12.2 million pounds ($19.4 million), or 3% of total sales, were up by 259.0% from 3.4 million pounds ($5.4 million) last year.
- Comparable-store sales were down by 0.5%.
- Total sales of 407.3 million pounds ($647.5 million) down by 0.6% from 409.6 million pounds ($651.2 million).
- Net income of 33.4 million pounds ($53.1 million) a decrease of 2.9% compared with net income of 34.4 million pounds ($54.7 million) in the same period last year.
- New customers increased by 3.0%.
N Brown did not include second quarter results in its earnings report filed last week.
“During the last quarter we have delivered numerous improvements to the online customer experience particularly for mobile devices, reducing page download speeds, introduced better search and navigation, as well as easier checkout,” Angela Spindler, chief executive, said in the earnings report. “We have also improved our digital marketing capabilities, including introducing automated personalized promotions.”
First-half upgrades to itsSimplyBe.com e-commerce site, SimplyBe.com.uk, which sells plus-size women’s apparel, include live chat, enhanced product image zoom and the addition of product recommendations.
So far this year N Brown had upgraded customer service across its U.K. businesses and offers daily deliveries, with an 8 p.m. next-day delivery order deadline. The company plans to extend that deadline to 9 p.m. in spring of 2015, the company says. “By Christmas we will be offering a collection and returns service from 5,500 parcel shops across the U.K.,” N Brown says.
Further enhancements to e-commerce and construction of a new distribution center in Shaw, Manchester, are expected to incur estimated costs of 5 million pounds ($7.9 million) in the second half of 2014, the company says.
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