Home schooling and renewed interest in arts and crafts among adults helps Hobbycraft triple sales during lockdown
Home schooling and a renewed interest in arts and crafts among adults helped Hobbycraft triple sales during lockdown.
Sales of its painting and craft supplies rocketed despite its 100 stores remaining shut.
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With schools also closed, desperate parents went online to find activities for the kids while baking, papercraft and knitting also grew in popularity.
Demand: Sales of its painting and craft supplies rocketed despite its 100 stores remaining shut
The company said like-for-like sales have grown ‘in excess of 200 per cent’ in lockdown.
The firm was bought by private equity firm Bridgepoint in 2010 in the hope it could take advantage of its specialist offering.
In the year to February 2020, before the pandemic struck, it recorded revenue growth of 8.9 per cent to £193.6m, it announced today, including 4.7 per cent like-for-like increase in stores. It reported a rise in adjusted earnings of 21.9 per cent to £14.8m, but does not need to disclose statutory profit until later this year.
In the year to February 2019 it made £6.8m profit on £177.6m of sales, up from a pre-tax profit of £1.1m on £168.5m of sales in 2018.
It has 750,000 social media fol – lowers and reached 15m people with craft classes by video on Zoom and Facebook during lockdown.
It said: ‘Demand for arts and crafts remains strong as a high level of customer demand continues both online and in stores.’