Jessops on the road to recovery

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JESSOPS REPORTED further progress in its recovery plan yesterdayas it unveiled a 3 per cent rise in like-for-like sales overChristmas.

The camera retailer, which secured its survival with a rescuedeal in September 2009, said it maintained deliveries in the extremeweather by ensuring all stores were fully stocked and hiring localfirms with smaller vans to reach customers.

It said the actions limited lost sales to between 1 per cent and1.5 per cent in the six weeks to 9 January, while business alsosoared in the final week before Christmas and between Boxing Day and1 January.

Online sales leapt as snowed-in shoppers turned to the internet,accounting for up to 25 per cent of all sales in the first fourweeks of the festive season.

Jessops added that like-for-like sales throughout the finalquarter of 2010 rose 5.3 per cent.

Jessops has been revamping stores and boosting its onlinebusiness as part of efforts to get the business back on track aftercoming close to collapse. The company rode the boom in demand fordigital cameras, but struggled when high street and internetcompetitors muscled in on the market.