Profits at homewares retailer Lakeland surged to their highest levels since 2017 during its latest financial year, according to new figures.
The business, which was founded in 1956 in Windermere, Cumbria, has posted pre-tax profits of £1m for 2021, up from £332,000 in 2020.
The last time the company's profits were higher was in 2017 when they totalled £2.3m. Lakeland had been loss-making in both 2018 and 2019.
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According to the newly-filed documents with Companies House, Lakeland's turnover also rose from £151m to £153m but the number of people it employed during 2021 fell from 1,488 to 1,405.
A statement signed off by the board said: "2021 got off to a challenging start with the Q1 lockdown forcing us to close all 64 of our retail stores.
"We were able to recover by repositioning our operational capacity into home shopping and e-commerce.
"This enabled us to offset a sizeable proportion of the lost sales but led to higher net operating costs during that period.
"Following the reopening of stores on April 12, we saw strong demand in stores, particularly in our out of town locations and a softening of demand in e-commerce as demand shifted.
"We traded well across all channels through the late spring and summer months and into the early part of Q4 with customers shopping for Christmas earlier than normal, fearful of further lockdowns and stock shortages due to the spread of the Omicron variant."
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