A fantastic week for electricals and home technology (EHT) products is how John Lewis buying director for electricals, Robbie Feather, described sales at the department store group for the week to July 2.

Sales of the category were up seven per cent on the year [actually 7.6 per cent], boosted by John Lewis’s clearance offer, “again reflecting the promotional profile of this market,” said Mr Feather.

He added: “IT continued to fly at +31 per cent year-on-year, large electrical +16 per cent and small electrical +9 per cent.

“Special Buy sales were up 100 per cent on the year across EHT. We continue to see good growth from new technologies, namely Kindle and iPad, but the real volume is coming from our core assortments: laundry, food preparation and laptops, to name a few.”

It also turned out to be a good week for electricals online at johnlewis.com as well. In fact, online sales of EHT products were 31 per cent up on a year ago.

Trade was again driven, said Mr Feather, by special buys. Online highlights were vision and large electrical products. “It was particularly good,” said Mr Feather, “to see strength coming through in big ticket items.”

“Looking forward, the market looks challenging but all indicators suggest we will continue to outperform our competition across all three directorates [EHT, home and fashion],” Mr Feather said.