Glam campers bring a ray of sunshine at Blacks

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After a tough start to its financial year, a surge in sales of camping equipment has seen like-for-like revenues jump more than 6% over the past fortnight, the company said in a trading statement today. That has helped to take the sting out of a 5% fall in group sales over the previous four months

"Camping holidays are up significantly year-on-year and that is good news for us," said Blacks chief executive Neil Gillis ahead of today's annual meeting. "People are staying at home this summer rather than going on their expensive European holiday.

"Industry figures are showing camping holiday bookings are up 10% this summer and forward bookings for next year are up 20%.

"The thing is, if a family is going to spend their two weeks on holiday camping they are not going to buy a cheap tent from a supermarket. They are going to spend a decent amount on some decent equipment. We have also seen a lot of people upgrading their old outdoor equipment.

"The added bonus for us is that the festival season has been really, really good, which is good for our sales of camping equipment."

In the 19 weeks to 12 July Blacks' group like-for-like sales were down 5.4%.

Within that, and including a 6.1% surge in sales in July, outdoor like-for-likes were 2.2% lower at its Blacks and Millets outlets.

Dragging down the group performance, however, was the group's boardwear outlets O'Neill, Freespirit and Mambo, with sales down 15.5%.

"Boardwear sales go through to September, so there is time for that to come back," said Gillis. The peak camping season is central to the group's financial performance for the year, with July and August making up 20% of annual sales.

Over the past two years the company has racked up more than £20 million of losses. However, with cost savings of £2.4 million so far this year and improved margins, profit levels are ahead of where the group was this time last year.