Watches of Switzerland, the UK-wide retailer owned by Aurum Holdings, has announced an 11% increase in festive sales.
Aurum, which also own Goldsmiths and Mappin & Webb, said the group’s total sales grew 9% like-for-like in the eight weeks to January 13th. The performance was dubbed “particularly strong” despite a difficult retail climate in the UK.
Aurum reported strong performance across all key watch brands, with watch sales continuing to dominate the group’s performance. Total watch sales increase of 9% over the period.
Goldsmiths sales were up 8% while Mappin & Webb and Aurum’s airport stores also enjoyed a sales boost, with both increasing 11% during the eight weeks.
With a view to Aurum’s e-commerce performance, an increase in the availability of product online helped drive sales in the Christmas period, with Aurum’s click and collect service particularly popular with consumers.
Justin Stead, chief executive of Aurum said: “Despite a challenging economic and trading environment, we have achieved another very strong performance over the festive period. I would like to congratulate the entire Aurum team and our partners on a terrific result.
“These results show that our strategy to constantly improve our product offering, online position and customer experience has been a success and one which we will continue to implement in 2013 to deliver significant growth.”
Aurum Holdings Limited was acquired by Apollo Global Management in December 2012. The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of 2013 and is subject to customary closing conditions.
Based on these results, the company says it is expecting to report a strong increase in Ebitda for the year ending February 3 2013.
