The Hut Group sales up 70%

Online retailer The Hut Group has seen its sales spike 70 per cent.

Sales are up from 51m in 2009 to 87m in 2010.

More than 80 per cent of these sales were generated by the Group’s own websites, including Zavvi.com and Thehut.com. The rest was generated through services to the company’s retail partners such as Tesco, Asda, Argos and WH Smith.

It was its non-entertainment product categories – such as fashion, sports, footwear, health and beauty, gifting, toys and accessories – that enjoyed the most growth, with sales up 600 per cent. This was driven by the launch of six new product sites – such as mybag.co.uk and gifted.com. The company also snapped up existing web retailers Iwantoneofthose.com, mankind.co.uk and lookfantastic.com.

The Hut Group’s entertainment categories also grew, with sales up 45 per cent year-on-year.

The company now has a six million customer base, up from the two million database it had in 2009.

Over Christmas, the company reported its strongest trading day over with 1.8m in orders. 160,000 packets were shipped on the busiest despatch day in December.

The firm recently raised 32.5m of institutional equity raised from Artemis, Balderton Capital, William Currie Group, Angus Monro and other investores. It has 9m in net cash.