JD Sports performance driven by young shoppers

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Sep 9, 2020

The boss of high-flying JD Sports said that success at the company in recent months has been driven by the desire of younger consumers to get back to socialising.

The owner of the signature chain, as well as the Size?, Blacks Leisure, Millets, Go Outdoors and Finish Line operations, this week reported sales down only 6.5% in the half that included global lockdowns.

And executive chairman Peter Cowgill said there was “no doubt whatsoever that the group’s younger shoppers “were more resilient”.

The Guardian reported him saying that younger consumers “became more frustrated during the lockdown and couldn’t wait to get out again and socialise with their friends. They probably have got a higher level of appetite for socialising and on balance a [lower] risk threshold.”

He also said that these shoppers showed they were more likely to buy online when physical shops were closed and that the firm’s athleisure offer was “right in the zone” as consumers adjusted their everyday clothing choices to being at home.

This meant that his initial assumption that the lockdown period would be “more desperate” was incorrect.

However, the firm still saw plunging profits and has no plan to pay back furlough money to the UK government as some other companies have done. Cowgill said the scheme had achieved its job preservation aim at the company.