No rain on Briscoe’s parade

The country might be experiencing a heatwave but the pre-christmas summer holidays were not so hot for many retailers.

Despite this, homewares and sporting goods retailer Briscoe Group is predicting a record annual result after releasing its fourth-quarter sales.

Managing director Rod Duke said things had been ‘‘a little different this quarter’’ due to unseasonably cold weather in December, with typical Christmas shopping patterns starting a few days prior to the big day.

This usually left retailers with a backlog of summer stock after the giftgiving season had gone.

Even though winter stock would start arriving in less than two weeks, Duke said he wasn’t suffering as much as he would have if summer had tapered off early. ‘‘I suspect we’ll see a lot of this through to Easter.’’

The cold December had a deeper impact on listed clothing retailers, with Kathmandu hinting that Christmas sales had not performed strongly and Hallenstein Glasson Holdings tempering expectations.

However, Briscoe Group is forecasting a full-year net profit of about $63 million, which would be up 2.7 per cent on the previous year.

Sales for the year ended on January 27 came in 4 per cent higher at $631.9m, or 3.1 per cent higher on a same-store basis.

Fourth-quarter sales, including the Christmas period, were $206m, 5.8 per cent up on the same period a year earlier.

A bright spot had been Briscoe’s online trade, which rose by 27 per cent and was now 10 per cent of all sales.

Duke said it was clear from the online business that shoppers valued convenience highly.

‘‘We’ve been at it now for about five or six years. We were relatively late to the exercise but it’s been very, very valuable,’’ he said. ‘‘You’ve got to be an omni-channel supplier, which just means that you supply through a number of channels.’’

Although commentators have speculated that retail could suffer this year from a weaker dollar and a housing-led slowdown, Duke was unconcerned.

‘‘Generally in the past, if it’s going to be attributed to housing, and people decide not to buy new homes but instead redecorate the one they’ve got, I might be able to mount a bit of an argument that it may even be positive,’’ he said.

‘‘But the things that are more likely to send off discretionary spending, from our experience, are the price of fuel and housing interest rates. They’re the two biggies.’’