The boss of Britain's biggest tile retailer has welcomed better than expected turnover during the lockdown.
Topps Tiles chief executive Rob Parker said the business had shown "resilience" and was well-positioned as the economy begins to recover - despite a huge drop in sales as the lockdown took hold.
Weekly sales at the Leicestershire-headquartered business dropped 80 per cent - compared to a year earlier - as the lockdown kicked in in April.
In May, as stores began to open again, trade was down 69 per cent year-on-year and by last month, sales were down 20 per cent.
Average sales per week grew from 拢800,000 during April (when all 356 stores were closed) to 拢3.9 million in the final week of June when all stores were trading.
Typical weekly sales in spring 2019 were just over 拢4 million.
Across the whole of the last three months sales were down around a half.
The business recently sold and leased back its head office and warehouse at Grove Park, near junction 21 of the M1, for 拢18.1 million, to provide it with extra cash in the bank to help see it through.
Mr Parker said: said: "I am pleased with the resilience shown by the business through this period and I would like to thank colleagues across the group for their hard work and dedication which ensured that, by the end of June, all Topps stores were back open and serving our customers safely.
鈥淭he group has demonstrated its resilience, with revenues ahead of our expectations, and we have strengthened our financial liquidity through the sale and leaseback of our central warehouse and head office facility.
鈥淟ooking ahead, from our market leading position and with a firm financial footing, Topps is well-positioned as the economy begins to recover.鈥
In a trading update the company said: 鈥淩etail performance in the third quarter ahead of revised expectations due to accelerated pace of store re-openings and better than expected customer demand.
鈥淩etail website has performed robustly with sales across the quarter 139 per cent ahead of the prior year, leveraging the group鈥檚 recent investment in its online platform.鈥
