Our learnings during the pandemic have reaffirmed our purpose, our strategy and our ambitions. We are clear on the opportunities to The flexibility of our digital accelerate our growth and have the right plans in place to achieve our goals. platform and supply chain I would personally like to thank my amazing allowed us to respond to high colleagues and supplier partners who have levels of customer demand.” worked together to deliver an enhanced customer experience, an excellent financial performance and a stronger business for the future. We have lived our shared value of being ‘stronger together’ and I am hugely grateful for their commitment to the Performance driven by digital investments business and each other. Investments made in our digital proposition, FY21 REVIEW including the new platform which launched in October 2019, meant that we have been able to Strong trading performance scale in response to the increased digital demand, We delivered excellent sales growth of 26.3% expanding our online experience, home delivery compared to FY20 despite facing major trading services and our contactless, local and friendly restrictions during extended periods. Our trading Click & Collect service. Our focus in FY21 was also performance in the year was impacted by two to further improve the quality of our customers’ significant periods of enforced closures, when experience, with customer satisfaction scores Dunelm’s ‘non-essential’ retailer status meant that increasing across all digital fulfilment channels. we were not allowed to let customers into our stores. Our online business continued to thrive, We continued to develop our proposition rapidly with digital sales penetration of 46% (FY20: 27%). throughout the year. We extended the range available for Click & Collect through fulfilment The flexibility of our digital platform and supply from our central warehouse and improved the chain allowed us to respond to high levels of speed of order fulfilment. As we scaled to meet customer demand, leading to growth in digital the increased demand for home delivery, we sales of 115% in the year, which included significant significantly shortened lead times, as well as growth in Click & Collect. When fully open, our enhanced our post-sales communications to stores proved equally popular, with high levels of improve the customer end to end journey and demand for our products and good growth being remove friction. We made it easier for customers to sustained during both initial re-opening periods shop our Made to Measure ranges by introducing and subsequently. a significant proportion of the product range online and offering customers a choice of virtual The appeal of our proposition enabled us to grow or physical consultations with experienced our active customer base by 8.5% year over year, colleagues. with growth of 106% in digital and multichannel customers, partially offset by a decline in the store- Improvements to our dunelm.com site drove only customer base as a result of periods of store an increase in organic search traffic and we closure. Market insight from GlobalData shows also optimised our paid search marketing by that we increased our share of the UK homewares implementing profitability-based bidding. When market to 9.1%, up 160bps year over year. stores re-opened in April, we were able to offer an enhanced in-store tablet selling experience, Gross margin improved by 130bps, mainly due allowing customers to shop the full Dunelm range. to a reduced Winter Sale and the postponement of the usual Summer Sale into FY22. Additionally, Delivering for all our stakeholders we continued to focus on driving sourcing gains As well as enhancing the experience of our to offset emerging cost price pressures from raw customers, we have ensured that our decisions materials and freight. We maintained our focus and actions this year have delivered for all our on operational grip across our cost base and stakeholders. delivered record profit before tax of £157.8m, up 45% compared to FY20, despite the very During the year, we created over 700 new roles challenging conditions. across the business, reflecting the confidence in our growth plans. Colleagues received a second special ‘thank you’ bonus in recognition of their dedication in delivering exceptional performance against a challenging backdrop. DUNELM GROUP PLC ANNUAL REPORT & ACCOUNTS 2021 21 STRATEGIC REPORT GOVERNANCEFINANCIAL STATEMENTSOTHER INFORMATION