Oliver Bonas upbeat as sales and profits rise
Oliver Bonas has filed its accounts for 2022 with sales at the business staying “resilient” even in the face of the cost-of-living crisis that has had a big impact in the UK fashion sector.
The company sells fashion, jewellery and homewares at mid-level prices and saw sales rising from £92.88 million in 2021 to £115.03 million this time.
That helped operating profit rise to £9.28 million from £7.7 million and profit after tax jumped to £7.62 million from £5.65 million a year earlier.
The company said 2022 was its first year of full trade since the start of the pandemic and it clearly made the most of this. It began the year with “cautious optimism” and said it saw plenty of pent-up demand.
That also saw it raising staff numbers by as much as 20% in its offices, warehouses and stores — the latter boosted by it opening eight new stores during the year and radically upsizing two more.
Like its peers, web sales dropped after having risen in the pandemic, but the fall was “marginal”. And while the company saw returns getting back to normal from the lower level seen during the pandemic (as orders now included more fashion product that’s more likely to be returned), this didn’t seem to have such a negative effect on the firm as has been seen with some other labels.
But on the downside, it was impacted by inflation as supply chain costs rose along with energy prices.
