You can see why Dunelm trumpets its growing online sales so loudly, because getting there was a hard slog. To judge by the market plaudits, the protracted and costly integration of the homeware retailer’s loss-making Worldstores deal has been forgiven.
Lockdowns made the timing of that acquisition, sought by management for the target’s more sophisticated online systems, fortuitous. Post-lockdown, the retailer has managed to hang on to the boost given to its website business, which accounted for a third of group sales during its first quarter and pushed the overall figure ahead of analysts’ expectations. The deal has been credited with a smoother launch of click-and-collect.
Stripping out online sales shows that store revenue was 15 per cent higher in the first quarter than in
