Black Friday helped deliver the biggest-ever week for sales in John Lewis's 150-year trading history.
Overall sales on Friday, November 28 were up 57% week on week and up 22% on last year, with online sales recording 42% year-on-year growth. Several shops achieved record takings on Black Friday, including Oxford Street, York, Southampton, Liverpool, Ipswich and Tamworth.

The retailer, which price-matched competitor events, achieved sales of £179.1m, surpassing its previous sales record of £164.4m which was set during the week before Christmas last year.

Black Friday started at the stroke of midnight as customers logged on early to browse johnlewis.com, resulting in a 300% increase of traffic during the early hours of trading. Some 70% of traffic came from smartphones and tablets between midnight and 8am.

For the first time all John Lewis shops opened at 8am, and at the same time online sales peaked, with almost 13,000 orders placed on johnlewis.com between 8am and 9am.

Electricals led the way with record-breaking weekly sales, up 41% year on year, driven by the hundreds of Black Friday offers available. Sales of small electricals specifically rose 66% on last year - a De'Longhi PrimaDonna S coffee machine sold every three and a half minutes - while tablets, computers and vision also rose dramatically.

It was another record week for lighting and furniture sales also remained strong.

Operations director Dino Rocos said that while the sales figures were attention-grabbing, "for me our biggest achievement was delivering an operation which ran like clockwork. Our website coped well with exceptional demand whilst the atmosphere in our shops remained both seasonal and calm."