Bumper profits in the bag for Harvey Nicks

Published on Friday 17 November 2006 12:39

LUXURY department store group Harvey Nichols has seen profits almost double - to £6 million.

The firm, which has one of its four UK stores in the Capital, said sales increased from 147m to 151m in the 12 months to April 1 this year.

And pre-tax profits rose by 2.2m from 3.8m the previous year, despite the group investing 1m in a new store in Dublin.

Joseph Wan, chief executive of Harvey Nichols, said the firm had seen a ten per cent rise in like-for-like sales since the beginning of the new financial period, which will end on April 1 next year.

Harvey Nichols said it had seen strong profits despite a slump in sales at its flagship Knightsbridge store, following the London terrorist attacks in July 2005.

The company, which launched its Edinburgh store on St Andrew Square in 2002, sells a range of luxury goods, from designer clothing and accessories to upmarket foods.

Turnover at its regional stores, which comprise Leeds, Manchester and Edinburgh - where it also operates the in-store Forth Floor Restaurant - came in at 51.7m, with profits topping 25m, a 1m increase from the previous year.

The accounts also revealed that the total number of staff in Harvey Nichols' regional stores had risen from 743 to 755 over the 12 months to April 1, creating a wage bill of 8.9m, up from 8.6m the previous year.

But pre-tax profit in its Harvey Nichols Regional Stores arm had dropped from 2005, when it was 1.7m, to 918,000- leaving the regional stores with an end-of-year loss after tax of 184,000, compared with a profit of 1.09m in 2005.

In addition to its UK portfolio, with branches in Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester as well as Edinburgh, Harvey Nichols has a growing international business - with shops in Dublin, Riyadh, Hong Kong, Dubai and a new store in Istanbul, which opened in October.

Last year, it said it planned to expand its UK chain to six, with the opening of a new boutique store in Bristol in 2008. Another boutique store already exists in Dundrum, Ireland.

Two years ago, the store said its profits had halved from 5m to 2.4m, which it blamed on a slump in tourism following the Iraq war and the Sars virus.

Harvey Nichols was established in Knightsbridge in 1813 and its existing flagship store in one of London's wealthiest districts was opened in the 1880s.

It was bought by Debenhams in 1919 and became part of the Burton Group in 1985, before being bought by a Hong Kong-based company, Dickson Concepts International in 1991.

The company listed Harvey Nichols on the London Stock Exchange in 1996. However, it was delisted and taken back into Hong Kong entrepreneur Dickson Poon's private ownership in January 2003.

In March 2004, protests from animal rights activists and anti-fur groups prompted Harvey Nichols to stop selling real fur items in any of its shops.