Sir Clive Woodward takes centre stage as The Very Group focuses on the future with series of live events

The Very Group, which operates online retailer Very, held a number of live events at its HQ yesterday, discussing its strategy and hearing a talk from rugby legend Sir Clive Woodward.

In a LinkedIn post, the company said: “Listening to (Woodward) talk about how he took his learnings from the business world and applied them to the sporting world with great success was an eye opener to say the least. Thank you to everybody at The Very Group who worked hard to make today a reality. Can't wait for the next one.”

Paul Hornby, Digital Customer Experience (DCX) Director at The Very Group, added: “Our CEO Lionel Desclée shared our future strategy and ambition, and we held customer, payments and retail media showcases throughout the day, as well as drop in sessions on digital customer experience and fashion and home.”

Christmas and Black Friday

In January, The Very Group announced its Christmas and Black Friday period trading results for the seven weeks to 23rd December 2022.

Very retail sales grew +2.2% compared with the corresponding period in 2021, when Omicron drove strong performance among UK online retailers.

Compared to the corresponding period in 2019 (pre-pandemic), Very retail sales grew +19.6%.

The pureplay increased its share of the total UK non-food online retail market to 7.8%, up from 7.6% in the same period last year.

Overall Group performance was, however, less than stellar. Including Littlewoods, Group retail sales declined -1.3% YoY, as the company battled economic headwinds and various industry challenges.

SKYGATE, CHATBOT, AND MOBILE APP

7.8 million items were processed at Skygate, Very’s automated fulfilment centre.

216,000 items were processed on 22nd November 2022, the busiest day of the venture’s peak period.

The fastest order during Christmas 2022 was processed and despatched in 10 minutes and 30 seconds, breaking the previous record of 16 minutes.

Good stock availability was maintained throughout peak thanks to Very’s month long Black Friday campaign (1st November to 1st December 2022), which helped manage spikes in demand.

Meanwhile, an average of 139,000 customers a week used the Very Assistant chatbot (+1.8% YoY), which draws on artificial intelligence to process natural language and answer more than 50 types of customer service query.

This helped to reduce calls to Very’s contact centre by 9% YoY.

Finally, mobile app visits increased +9.4% YoY.

App visits as a percentage of total Very visits reached 41.4% (Christmas 2021: 37.7%). App sales made up 45.4% of total sales (Christmas 2021: 39.9%).

Desclée commented: “Our team pulled out all the stops to deliver an amazing Christmas for the families we serve and a strong trading performance for the period.”

“We recorded year-on-year growth in Very and grew market share despite the challenging backdrop. As expected, our customers prioritised toys, gifts and beauty items for their loved ones, justifying our decision to invest in stock within the category.”

He added: “Our performance was underpinned by our trusted supplier and delivery partner relationships and our highly automated fulfilment centre, Skygate, which allowed us to meet our customers’ expectations throughout the festive period.”

“The impact of the high cost of living will create challenges for all retailers in the year ahead, but we’re confident that our combination of online retail and flexible ways to pay will continue to offer our customers the convenience, value and flexibility they need.”