The CEO of Marks Electrical says the business saw record sales in the build-up to Christmas, helped by demand for energy efficient appliances, televisions and fridges.
Sales of A-rated items such as heat pump tumble dryers helped the online retailer grow sales by a third in the three months to Christmas, compared to a year earlier. Revenues for the period were £29.7 million.
Founder and chief executive Mark Smithson said the group was on track to achieve its full year targets, while bigger competitors such as AO had seen year-on-year revenues fall for the same three months.
Mr Smithson, who founded the Leicester business 35 years ago, said: “I am proud of the entire team at Marks Electrical for delivering a record quarterly performance, with year-on-year growth of 33.4 per cent against a tough economic back-drop.
“This further demonstrates the resilience of our business model and the attractiveness of our market-leading customer offering, which more people are discovering up and down the country.
“To continue our focus on growing brand awareness, we further invested in highly targeted television, radio and out-of-home campaigns over the Black Friday and Christmas sales peaks.
“This led to increased website traffic and broad-based revenue growth across the UK, but with particularly strong improvements year-on-year in London, South East England and the East Midlands.
“We’ve worked closely with our suppliers throughout the quarter, enhancing our position as a growing, but agile, national retail partner of choice.
“As supply has stabilised during the last 12 months, we have been able to capitalise on our strong net cash position to enhance our inventory range and product availability, further improving our offering for customers.
“After an improvement in profitability in the third quarter, we look forward to maintaining our performance management discipline on revenue, profit and cash in order to achieve our full year targets and continue to demonstrate our differentiated proposition.”
As well as free next day delivery, Marks recently set up its own in-house installation team for gas appliances and integrated appliances such as dishwater – ensuring customers will get a guaranteed level of service.
More than 3,000 installations have been completed since the service launched last August.
