An online push helped lift sales and profits at Moss Bros after a slow start to the year for the menswear retailer.
The group, which trades from 136 stores across the UK, launched its new retail website in January and said year-on-year online sales soared 138% in the 18 weeks from the end of January to the start of June.
That helped nudge like-for-like sales up 0.3%, as a 2% rise in retail sales offset a 6.2% slump in suit hire sales.
While Moss has so far concentrated on selling suits and shirts online, it plans to launch a hire website in September to offer a "fully-integrated omni-channel customer experience".
Online sales now comprise 3.3% of its total sales, up from 1.4% a year earlier.
Underlying profits strengthened 0.6% on a year earlier, compared with a 2.4% fall in the first seven weeks of the period.
Chief executive Brian Brick said hire sales will continue to be "volatile" for the rest of the year as it comes up against unusual trading patterns caused by the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and Olympics last year.
But he said: "Although we remain cautious about the general economic environment we believe our strategy of refitting stores, investing in e-commerce infrastructure and focusing on our target market and customer offer will strengthen the Moss Bros brand and will maximise profitability."
Moss now trades from 24 new-format stores after refitting 18 and adding six new outlets.
These revamped stores are trading better than non-refitted sites, Moss said.
Shares in the group were up 2% following the update, but have lost some of their momentum since the start of the year.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article