Findel delivers paltry sales rise

4th Aug 2011 13:38

Findel, the home shopping group behind the cleaning products brand Kleeneze and supplier of education products, said sales so far this year are just 1% ahead of last year's. The group admits that the external environment remains challenging resulting in some pressure on margins, although these were offset by cost savings.Bad debt indicators continue to show gradual improvement for the company whilst significant progress is being made on upgrading buying and merchandising effectiveness.Within Kleeneze the difficult economic environment is creating a challenge for the group with sales below the prior year in the first quarter.Chairman David Sugden said: "We have made an encouraging start on our turnaround, although it is early days. The group's normal peak trading periods are still to come and the external environment continues to provide a headwind. "Nonetheless, we continue to see the opportunity for significantly improved performance over the medium-term, and are confident that we are taking the right steps to achieve that."He added: "The performance in the first 17 weeks shows that where we have been able to coincide new catalogue releases with our newly improved service levels, we are seeing signs of our business recovering, particularly in regions where we have geographic strength. "However, those brands whose main catalogues were issued before the refinancing in March (and thus had significantly poorer service levels at that time) are taking longer to restore their customer reputation with a negative impact upon sales and margin." The share price was down 5.6% to 6.4p at 1.34pm.