John Lewis: Black Friday to be bigger than ever

Last year’s Black Friday delivered John Lewis’ most lucrative week in its 150-year-history. However, the employee-owned firm’s managing director, Andy Street, said the late November discounting day imported from the United States disrupted traditional Christmas trading patterns and may have to be tempered in 2015.

Mr Street said John Lewis’ “never knowingly undersold” price-matching pledge meant its participation in the November 27 Black Friday event would exceed 2014’s.

“We cannot stand aside, we will not blink over that NKU commitment,” he said.

Mr Street said John Lewis had recruited 2,000 extra staff to deal with deliveries and invested “tens of millions of pounds” in capacity to ensure Black Friday orders are honoured.

He said there was now a new shape to Christmas trade, with three peaks - Black Friday, the Christmas peak and the post Christmas Eve clearance sale.

“Black Friday has turned into our biggest week by a mile and it will be bigger again this year,” he said.

On Tuesday supermarket Asda said it would not participate in this year’s Black Friday, a year after brawls at one of its stores characterised the arrival of the US import to Britain

“They’ve been brave,” Mr Street said. “But it won’t change what’s going to happen this year.”

This was because suppliers had made products for the event months ago, while retailers had similarly long ago planned their promotional programmes.

“What I do think is interesting though, looking further ahead to future years, it might just help do exactly what I tried to do in January, which is say ‘hang on, let’s think about this’,” said Mr Street.

Last Friday John Lewis said sales had increased 2.5 per cent in the 13 weeks to October 31, its fiscal third quarter.

Mr Street gave an upbeat Christmas outlook. He said: “John Lewis has won the last six Christmases and outperformed the market every Christmas since the (financial) crash. This year it’s got to be seven out of seven and I’m genuinely confident that the stall is set for us to do exactly that.”

He also announced John Lewis had signed a deal with Dutch department store de Bijenkorf to open “shop in shops” in some of its stores in 2016, a move that represents John Lewis’ debut in continental Europe.