The family owned bookseller Foyles returned to profit last year as its new London flagship proved to be a beacon for book lovers.
Sales at the new store in the former Central Saint Martins art school on Charing Cross Road – a few doors down from its famously dishevelled old shop – jumped by 10% in the year to 30 June as customers turned out to meet famous authors including Hilary Mantel, Yotam Ottolenghi and PD James. The four-storey building, which stocks more than 200,000 titles along four miles of shelves, also boasts its own auditorium.
The retailer reported a small operating profit for the year to 30 June, a return to the black after significant one-off costs pulled it down to an operating loss of £600,000 the previous year.
Paul Currie, the Foyles chief executive, said: “We have returned the business from being at a loss in a year of great change to a position of profit and stability. This has been achieved through careful cost control and smart operating processes.”
Currie, who took charge at the start of last year, has overhauled the retailer’s “Foyalty” scheme and website, but says there is more to do. “Whilst this is an improvement on 2013-14, we are still challenged by low margins in a retail sector that has heavy costs of operations and low sales density,” he said.
The Foyle family ploughed an additional £2m into the business in 2013 via a rights issue. Christopher Foyle, the chairman, who owns two-thirds of the 113-year-old company, wants to make its stores a magnet for book lovers by creating the kind of experience that draws shoppers to Harrods or Hamleys.
Currie said its other London stores, in Westfield Stratford City, Waterloo station and Royal Festival Hall, as well as its Bristol Cabot Circus branch, enjoyed robust trading as shoppers responded to the Summer of Stories series of children’s events, and events with Aardman animations and Books Are My Bag. In September, Foyles opened in Birmingham’s Grand Central shopping centre.
In January, the retailer reported strong Christmas trading, with like-for-like sales up by 4.7% in December.
