Home is where the big sales growth is for U.K. web-only apparel retailer ASOS Plc., No. 22 in the Internet Retailer Europe 500.
Strong U.K. sales growth helped the retailer post an 8% increase in total retail sales for the quarter, with sales in its home U.K. market rising a strong 24% in the retailer’s fiscal first quarter, which ended Nov. 30. The retailer posted a dip in year-over-year international retail sales of 2% for the quarter.
“International trading conditions remain challenging,” CEO Nick Robertson said. “We have commenced investment into our international pricing and have started to roll out our zonal pricing capability, which combined will help us to address our international performance.
September and October were challenging, Robertson said, but sales rebounded going into the holiday season. “Our sales have since gathered momentum and we had our biggest ever trading week over cyber weekend in November,” Robertson said.
The retailer also said it received 6.3 million pounds ($9.90 million) in insurance money related to a June fire at its main distribution center in Barnsley in South Yorkshire, England. ASOS says it is using the money to more quickly roll out its international pricing scheme.
For its fiscal Q1 ended Nov. 30 ASOS reported:
- Total retail sales of 246.329 million pounds ($387.02 million), up 7.9% from 228.274 million pounds ($358.65 million) a year earlier.
- U.K. sales of 104.804 million pounds ($164.66 million) up 24.2% compared with 84.370 million pounds ($132.56 million) in fiscal Q1 2013.
- Total international sales declined 1.7% to 141.525 million pounds ($222.36 million) compared with 143.904 million pounds ($226.09 million) a year earlier.
- International sales accounted for 57% of total sales compared with 63% a year earlier.
- U.S. sales rose 8.9% to reach 23.975 pounds ($37.66 million) from 22.024 ($34.60 million) a year earlier.
- Non-U.K. Europe sales fell 1% to 59.001 million pounds ($92.68 million) from 59.547 million pounds ($93.54 million) in Q1 2013.
- Sales in the rest of the world totaled 58.49 million pounds ($91.88) down 6.2% from 62.333 million pounds ($97.82 million)
- ASOS’ web sites attracted 90 million visits during November 2014, up from 81 million in November 2013. As of the end of November, the retailer had 9.0 million active customers, up from 7.6 million a year earlier. 3.6 million consumers resided in the U.K. compared with 3.0 million a year earlier. 5.4 million lived outside the U.K. compared with 4.6 million a year earlier.