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John Lewis sold one tablet every second on Black Friday last week, helping the retailer to record its biggest ever sales week in its 150-year history.
Electricals led the way with record breaking weekly sales, up 40.9 per cent year-on-year, driven largely by the hundreds of Black Friday offers available.
On Friday November 28th, sales in the Tablets and Computers category rose 127 per cent, Vision sales jumped 131 per cent and Small Electricals increased 66 per cent year-on-year).
One Samsung UE40H6400 TV was sold every minute, while one De’Longhi Prima Donna S coffee machine was sold every three and a half minutes.
Black Friday helped deliver the biggest ever week for sales in John Lewis’s 150 year trading history. Overall sales were up 21.8 per cent to £179.1 million over last year’s £164.4 million, with online sales recording a 42.2 per cent year-on-year growth.
Several John Lewis shops also achieved record takings on Black Friday itself, including Oxford Street, York, Southampton, Liverpool, Ipswich and Tamworth.
Check out PCR’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday tech deals roundup here, and the carnage that broke out in Tesco stores around the UK
Black Friday started at the stroke of midnight as customers logged on early to browse johnlewis.com resulting in a 300 per cent increase in web traffic during the early hours of trading.
Around 70 per cent of this traffic came from smartphones and tablets between midnight and 8am. For the first time ever all of John Lewis’ shops opened early at 8am and at the same time as our shops opened, online sales also peaked with almost 13,000 orders placed on johnlewis.com between 8am and 9am.
Dino Rocos, Operations Director at John Lewis, said: "We picked and packed 87 per cent more online parcels on Saturday than we did last year, and to have delivered successfully on customer expectation is a testament to the work of our Partners both on Black Friday itself and in our forward-planning. Our website coped well with exceptional demand whilst the atmosphere in our shops remained both seasonal and calm with customers enjoying extended opening hours and the great offers to be had."
There are 43 John Lewis shops in the UK.
