There’s no place like home for U.K.-based online apparel retailer ASOS Plc.
For its first six months of fiscal 2015, ASOS’ sales grew 27.1% in its home market of the United Kingdom to reach 231.37 million pounds ($343.56 million) from 182.04 million pounds ($270.31 million) for the same period a year earlier. U.K. sales growth far outpaced international sales for ASOS, No. 22 in the Internet Retailer Europe 500, helping the retailer post a strong total sales increase of 14% for period compared to the same period a year earlier.
For its fiscal six months of 2015 ending Feb. 28 ASOS also reported:
- Total retail sales grew 13.6% to reach 536.43 million pounds ($796.54 million), up from 472.32 million pounds ($701.35 million) a year earlier.
- Sales outside the U.K. grew 5.1% to reach 305.06 million pounds ($452.98) from 290.28 million pounds ($431.04) a year earlier. International sales now account for 57% of total sales compared with 61% a year earlier.
- U.S. sales grew 17% and European Union sales outside the U.K. grew 7%. Sales for the rest of its international markets fell 1%.
- Third-party revenues, mainly from advertisements on its websites and from its magazine, increased 22%.
- Average order volume increased 7.1% to 67.12 pounds ($99.67) compared with 62.67 pounds ($93.06).
- Profit before tax of 18 million pounds ($26.73 million) compared with 20.1 million pounds ($29.85 million) a year earlier.
- ASOS had 9.30 million active customers who had made a purchase in the past year as of February 2015, up 13.0% from 8.23 million a year earlier. 3.7 million of those customers were located in the U.K. compared with 3.2 million a year earlier. 5.6 million were located outside the U.K. compared with 5.0 million a year earlier.
- ASOS’ websites attracted 88 million visits compared with 71 million in February 2014.
- ASOS also rolled out what it calls zonal pricing, or different pricing for international markets based on trends, the economy and other conditions. ASOS has zonal pricing across 50 brands in Australia, the U.S., France, Germany and Spain.
- It hired Clifford Cohen from Marks and Spencer as chief information officer and Peter Collyer form Claire’s Stores Inc. as people director.
“Trading for the six months ended 28 February 2015 included a record Christmas season, with total sales increasing by 14%,” says CEO Nick Robertson. “With our continued investment in our international price competitiveness gaining traction, momentum in the business is building.”
In the first six month of its fiscal 2015, ASOS added 150 brands, including Abercrombie & Fitch, Adidas and Elise, and it discontinued 180 brands.
ASOSalso plans to invest 75 million pounds ($111.37 million) in technology by the end of next year. It recently launched local versions of its iOS and Android apps in Germany, France, the U.S., Italy, Spain and Russia. ASOS says traffic from mobile now accounts for more than 50% of total traffic and in the next six months it will launch a mobile app in China.
ASOS says it also re-engineered its order processing platforms to support peak times and is relaunching its mobile checkout. It also unveiled a new warehouse control system at its main hub in Barnsley, UK, and launched new stock monitoring technology at its fulfillment center in Germany.
Other developments of note during the period include:
- ASOS launched social sign-in across all its sites and apps, enabling customers to sign in using Facebook, Twitter and Google+ credentials.
- It launched product recommendations across all its mobile apps and will roll them out to its websites in the next six months.
- Upgraded search functionality on its Spanish, Italian, Australian and Russian websites.
- Its ASOS Premier membership which offers free shipping and other perks for an annual fee in the U.K., U.S., France, Germany and Australia increased nearly 70% year over year.
- It reduced local currency prices for Australian, New Zealand and EU customers. It says the response is encouraging with increased sales in those regions.
- It expects to launch new European websites within the next year and invested 3.1 million pounds ($4.6 million) in China.
- It extended Saturday evening next-day delivery cutoff time in the UK from 8 p.m. to midnight and its Sunday next-day delivery cutoff from 2 to 5 p.m. It also began displaying estimated delivery dates at checkout for standard shipping in the United Kingdom.
- It extended international next-day delivery to Spain, Italy, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands and plans to extend it to Belgium, Ireland and Northern Ireland by the end of this financial year.
- It also offered expedited shipping options in Korea and Singapore that are at least 50% faster than standard delivery. Over the next six months, ASOS is planning to add similar shipping options in Russia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan.
- It partnered with parcel pickup and return network Doddle to allow shoppers to make returns in the UK. It also launched a service that collects items for returns at consumers’ homes as well as the ability to return a locker boxes in the UK.
- The e-retailer launched a buy online, pick up in store trial with Boots drugstores in North London. “We continue to seek further pickup, dropoff options solutions in all our key strategic territories,” ASOS says.
- Total order processing increased 14% in the first six month over a year earlier, ASOS says, with a weekly record of two million packages dispatched in one week at its warehouse in Barnsley, UK, in November.
- Its main European warehouse in Germany currently dispatches 24% of total EU orders, mainly to Germany, France, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands. ASOS expects this to reach 35% by the end of its financial year. Its warehouse in the U.S. consistently fulfills more than 25% of U.S. orders, and ASOS aims to increase that percentage over the next year.