The U.K. apparel retailer bounces back from a June warehouse fire that shut down sales for two days.

British online apparel retailer ASOS Plc logged strong sales in 2014 but earnings declined.

The company weathered a number of events that pulled profits down, says Nick Robertson, CEO, including “significant investment in our warehousing, the launch of our new business in China, the strengthening of the pound and the fire at our Barnsley warehouse in June, all of which combined to reduce profits by 14%.”

Despite such challenges “our customer engagement was exceptionally strong, with highest ever average order frequency, conversion and average basket size, and we exited the year with 8.8 million active customers, an increase of 25% over last year,” Robertson says.

For the 2014 fiscal year ended Aug. 31, ASOS, No. 22 in the Internet Retailer 2014 Europe 500, reported:

  • E-commerce sales of 975.5 million pounds ($1.58 billion), up by 26.8% from 769.4 million pounds ($1.24 billion) in fiscal 2013.
  • U.K. online sales of 372.2 million pounds ($601.2 million), a 34.9% increase from 276.0 million pounds ($445.8 million).
  • International e-commerce sales of 583.0 million pounds ($941.6 million), up by 22.0% from 477.8 million pounds ($771.7 million).
  • Average order, including value added tax, of 62.8 pounds ($101.40), up by 3% from 61.0 pounds ($98.51).
  • Pre-tax earnings of 46.9 million pounds ($75.7 million), a 14.3% decline from pre-tax earnings of 54.7 million pounds ($88.3 million) last year.

ASOS says it invested 15.1 million pounds ($24.4 million) in technology in 2014, including the launch of Australian and U.S. versions of Android and iOS mobile commerce apps during the year. The company plans to add localized apps in France, Germany Italy, Spain and Russia over the next six months.

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ASOS also added new checkout and order processing functions in fiscal 2014. It will continue replatforming its web sites, which will enable the company to share all content and product category pages “globally across a wider range of languages and devices, and significantly improve our international web site response times,” ASOS says.

The company plans to pour another 75 million pounds ($121.1 million) into technology over the next two years.

ASOS sells more than 75,000 products over 850 brands including its own label, on nine local language web sites in the U.K., U.S., France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Australia, Russia and China.It has fulfillment centers in the U.K., U.S., Europe and China and ships worldwide.

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