Cornish fashion brand Seasalt Ltd is feeling swell after reporting a 14% hike in sales over Christmas.
The firm, the 14th fastest growing in Devon and Cornwall, revealed positive sales growth across all channels for the five weeks to January 4, 2020.
Online sales were up 13% and 海角视频 stores saw a 15% sales increase year-on-year. International sales were also up, by 43% over the Christmas period.
In November 2019, Seasalt announced that pre-tax profits had leapt to £2.5million. It reported turnover growth of 29% to £66million.
The Christmas results cement its reputation as a high street success at a time when the high street meltdown is claiming victims in the fashion sector left, right and centre.
Seasalt’s results, for the financial year ending February 2, 2019, showed operating profit was up £2.1million and before-tax profits hit £2.5million – more than six times higher than the 2018 total of £368,000.
Underlying EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) was up 51% to £7million while gross profit margin improved 57%, compared with 55% a year earlier.
The company has now enjoyed a decade of 20% year-on-year sales growth.
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The business has been boosted by a wave of store openings and growth in its online division.
In June 2019 it opened its first international store in Clonakilty, Ireland, and has since opened new shops in Lymington and Edinburgh, with the latter recording the highest revenue across all stores during the Christmas 2019 period.
Seasalt wants to open an additional 40 stores in the next five years, including eight in the next year, having already added 10 stores since early 2018 in locations such as Belfast and Cambridge.
In addition, online sales jumped 35% with strong growth in Germany and the USA. There was a 21% hike in active online customers too, attracted by 12 collections over the year.
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Paul Hayes, chief executive of Seasalt, said: “I’d like to thank everyone at Seasalt for working so hard to ensure we enjoyed another positive Christmas season.
“It’s certainly a tough and challenging market but our ethos of good shopkeeping and the appeal of our beautiful and stylish collections made a big difference to us.
“Our focus now is to strive to maintain momentum through the year and into the new decade.”
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The company, renowned for its printed dresses inspired by Cornish artists and designers, stems from a single shop opened in Penzance by the Chadwick family in 1981.
That was when Don Chadwick moved from the Midlands and bought the outlet near the seafront in the Cornish port.
His sons Neil, Leigh and David later took control, launching Seasalt as a retail company in 2004.
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There are now 68 Seasalt stores across the 海角视频 and it has opened additional warehouse space at its distribution centre in Redruth, Cornwall.
The company, headquartered in the Cornish port of Falmouth, now employs about 1,000 people, 300 of them in Cornwall making it one of the Duchy’s most important private sector employers.
In 2018 Seasalt received £16million in investment from BGF (Business Growth Fund) and Santander, the first time the firm had accepted external finance. It is still family run, however.
Seastalt was named at number 14 in the Western Morning News’ Fast Growth 75 for 2019, leaping 13 places.