Britain’s John Lewis optimistic on Christmas trading outlook

By James Davey

LONDON (Reuters) -British department store retailer John Lewis is “quietly optimistic” about trading in the run-up to Christmas despite the prospect of the new Labour government announcing tax rises in next week’s budget, its boss said on Thursday.

The John Lewis department store business is part of the employee-owned John Lewis Partnership which also runs the upmarket Waitrose supermarket chain.

You tend to get a feel for these things and what we’ve seen is this optimism build as we’ve gone into the autumn season,” Peter Ruis, executive director for John Lewis, told reporters.

He said both John Lewis and Waitrose were currently trading ahead of their plans, noting sales in John Lewis’ Christmas shop are up 18% year-on-year, while Waitrose’s appointment bookings for online deliveries are “way ahead” of last year.

An expectation of another interest rate cut next month and a sense that consumers are in a better place economically than this time last year is “showing through in the customer behaviour”, he said.

Official data published last week showed UK retail sales unexpectedly rose in September. However, other retailers have said shoppers remain nervous about spending on discretionary items ahead of finance minister Rachel Reeves’ Oct. 30 budget statement.

“We have a budget every year, there’s a lot of press interest because it’s the first of this government. I don’t generally find it’s a huge thing for customers,” said Ruis at a media event at John Lewis’ revamped flagship store on London’s Oxford Street.

The 160-year old store’s 6.5 million pound ($8.4 million) upgrade is part of a planned 800 million pounds investment in the John Lewis brand over four years.

The store has a new, bigger beauty hall featuring 175 brands, improvements to its jewellery, homewares, technology and appliances offers, a Waterstones bookshop, new rooftop restaurant and bar, and from next year a Jamie Oliver Cookery School and Cafe.

Ruis said the post-COVID return of shoppers to physical stores had given the group the confidence to invest in its estate – with 126 million pounds spent this year a further 136 million pounds committed for 2025.

We all came out of COVID thinking ‘had we trained the customer to live online‘, and we found out really quickly that we hadn’t.

($1 = 0.7706 pounds)

(Reporting by James DaveyEditing by Mark Potter)