Black Friday helps department store John Lewis enjoy record week

Department store John Lewis has reported its best ever week of trading thanks to Black Friday.

Sales for the week ending on Saturday 26 November were up 6.5% on the previous year at £199.8m.

Best sellers included Sonos speakers, GHD hair straighteners and Samsung TVs.

Fashion sales were up 4.6% with popular ranges including Ted Baker (Other OTC: TBAKF - news) women's accessories and Calvin Klein pyjamas and lingerie.

Black Friday, which fell on the 25 November, was itself the store chain's biggest ever day.

Mobile consumers shopped from midnight to 9am but customers carried on their spending sprees at work with desktop online purchases representing the largest share of traffic after 9am.

At its busiest time on Friday morning, John Lewis was taking five orders a second online.

John Lewis's extended Black Friday event ran from Thursday to Monday.

Dino Rocos, lead director and operations director, said: "We traded well in both shops and online with shops becoming busier as the weekend progressed."

Meanwhile Waitrose, also part of the employee-owned John Lewis Partnership, enjoyed a Thanksgiving boost last week with turkey orders up by a third on last year.

Online searches for recipes for pumpkin pie - traditionally associated with the US festival - more than doubled and a third more pie cases were sold.

Waitrose sales rose to £136.6m, up 1.3% on the same week last year.

Separately, Visa (Xetra: A0NC7B - news) said that shoppers in the UK spent more than £2bn on Visa cards on Black Friday, with nearly half of that online. The total was 13% up on Black Friday last year.

Industry data published over the weekend suggested online sales growth on Black Friday had not been as strong as predicted while shopper visits to stores had unexpectedly grown.