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Shoe Zone has announced that group revenue dropped slightly to £119.1m in the full-year ending 2 October 2021, down from £122.6m in 2020 and £162m in 2019.
This decline was largely attributed to the effects of the pandemic, which saw its store estate closed for 16 weeks in the first half of the financial year.
Nonetheless, digital revenue soared 58.5% to £30.6m in the period, up from £19.3m the prior year, and represented 25.7% of overall revenue. This was boosted by the key Back to School period.
The group ended the year trading out of 410 stores, 50 less than the 460 in operation in 2020. It now anticipates that pre-tax profits will be “not less” than £6.5m for the full financial year.
The estate is currently made up of 343 original Shoe Zone stores, 51 Big Box and 16 Hybrid stores with the group claiming to continue to reduce the number of original stores that are no longer “commercially viable”.
Anthony Smith, chief executive, said: “Shoe Zone has weathered an intensely challenging year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The negative impact of this has been largely mitigated due to quick action taken in areas we could control, by reducing costs, continuing and accelerating investment in our digital business and improving operations.
“We have seen a minimum of a five-fold increase in container prices over the last 12 months and this will continue to impact us for at least a further six months until the issues being experienced in the whole supply chain return to more sensible levels.”
