Zooming sales for web giants
ASOS AND JUST EAT IN LOCKDOWN BOOST
TWO online businesses benefiting from the coronavirus turmoil revealed a surge in sales yesterday.
Internet fashion firm ASOS posted record results – despite lockdown denting demand for going-out clothes.
Meanwhile, the owner of food-to-go app Just Eat said UK households ordered a whopping 46.4million takeaways in the three months to the end of September.
The two businesses are among the few that have seen rocketing trade as people remain wary of venturing out.
ASOS, founded in 2000, targets fashion conscious 20-somethings.
Sales leapt by a fifth to almost £3.2billion in the year to September. Cost-cutting and a drop in returned items from its 23million customers helped profits soar 329 per cent to £ 142mil lion. Boss Nick Beighton said customers had switched to keyboard fashion to “look good for Zoom calls”.
ASOS is building a fourth major UK depot in the Midlands, costing £90million, to keep up with demand.
However, Beighton warned: “We are worried about how unemployment might fall for 20-somethings globally.”
It is launching a new low-priced brand, with items from £8 to £28, to meet the “recessionary impact on customers”.
Beighton also warned lockdown had led to industry-wide shortages of products such as trainers. ASOS’s share price, up 46 per cent in the year to date, dived 10 per cent yesterday.
Elsewhere, Just Eat Takeaway.com said more families were opting to eat in amid the second Covid wave. Orders globally rose 46 per cent to 151million in three months to September 30.