Aberdeen defies Lewis crunch

Published on Friday 21 November 2008 20:34

John Lewis department stores saw weekly sales fall 14%

ABERDEEN'S branch of John Lewis has defied the UK slump in weekly sales at the department store chain, which were down 14 per cent in the seven days to 15 November.

The store reported just a 1.5 per cent decline in sales, compared with 10.7 per cent at the firm's Glasgow outlet and 12.9 per cent in Edinburgh.

Sales of the company's Waitrose food group sank by 4.6 per cent year-on-year, figures out yesterday showed.

Group turnover last week was 61.44 million – down from 71.48m the previous year.

Barry Matheson, head of selling development at John Lewis, said in a statement:

"The newspapers are full of stories about the impact of the credit crunch spreading to the real economy, and retailers are frequently being cited as evidence of that.

"But that in no way diminishes my conviction that we will once again outperform the competition as we get closer to Christmas."

But Howard Archer, chief UK economist at Global Insight, warned that the fact that the high street "bellwether" was showing signs of a fall-out from customer belt tightening meant that consumer spending was "significantly weaker" than official data has suggested.

He said: "John Lewis has indicated that the year-on-year fall in its department store sales in the week to 15 November was distorted by a particularly strong sales performance in the corresponding week in 2007. It has argued that the underlying decline was around 10 per cen."

He added: "Even accepting this point, the latest figures portray a pretty bleak picture as they mark the third time in four weeks that John Lewis's department store sales have fallen by around 10 per cent year-on-year."