Pandora’s online business is proving itself to be completely resilient to the global coronavirus pandemic after revealing that sales through its ecommerce operations soared 176% during Q2.
Although the growth can be heavily attributed to customers browsing online in the absence of physical stores being open due to lockdowns, it also reflects the huge investment that Pandora has been making online as part of its omnichannel strategy.
The move of a relative larger part of sell-out from wholesale to online is positively impacting organic growth compared to sell-out growth as Pandora benefits from the higher average selling price (ASP) in online sales.
Pandora said its online stores continue to perform better than before the global lockdown based on both increased traffic and a higher conversion rate.
That has prompted the company to secure additional online capacity to be able to cope with continued significant growth in the forthcoming peak trading period of Q4.
Across markets, there are no clear indications of a lasting COVID-19 impact on the average basket characteristics.
The product category mix, units per transaction and average selling price are all developing well in line with the trends observed in January and February of 2020 where units per transaction were roughly unchanged compared to the year before and ASP decreased slightly due to the increased focus on affordability.
Last year’s implementation of the new design and updated backend of its online store has improved the consumer journey and proved to be reliable during the second quarter.
Markets where the online channel comprises a larger part of the business, including the UK, naturally performed better during the lockdown.
As the physical stores have reopened, Pandora said it has observed a negative correlation between traffic online and traffic into physical stores but the online store continues to perform better than before COVID-19.
The momentum of the online store has been supported by commercial initiatives, among others the launch of an online-exclusive product collection.
