Online bathroom retailer Victoria Plum has announced that its sales rose by a record 46 per cent to £103m for the year ended 28 February 2021. The company has also put in place a permanent remote working strategy.

In addition its EBITDA increase by 115 per cent to £4.5m. Over the same period, the company grew its headcount from 349 to 398.

18 months ago the Doncaster based company was acquired by Leeds-based private equity fund Endless, this year also marks its twentieth year in business.

During that time, Victoria Plum has continued its successful management-led turnaround and transformation strategy under the leadership of chief executive, Paul McClenaghan.

This included launching a bathroom design and installation service in 2020, a move that has clearly differentiated the company, creating higher value transactions and enhanced customer relationships.

Victoria Plum also took the decision last year for all its people to permanently work remotely. The only exceptions to this are the teams working in the company’s 275,000 sq ft distribution facility in Doncaster and across its nationwide delivery network.

Victoria Plum’s Doncaster facility and one of its offices in Hessle, East Yorkshire, have now become hubs where people can work and meet according to their requirements.

Commenting on the business’s performance, chief executive Paul McClenaghan said: “We have an ambitious growth strategy, highly capable people throughout the company and a collective determination to further accelerate our rate of expansion. These latest record results validate our approach and provide us with the platform to progress our plans at pace.

“Elements of our results have benefitted from the speeding up of the structural shift to online retail throughout 2020. However, we were constantly evolving Victoria Plum as a pure-play online retailer long before last year’s events happened and will continue to do so.”

Compared to the previous financial year, Victoria Plum’s website users increased by 165 per cent to 23.2 million whilst its sessions rose 194 per cent to more than 51 million.

Paul continued: “We are confident that we will continue to grow at speed. Our market fundamentals are strong, we have the necessary scalable infrastructure in place and a clearly differentiated design and installation service that is experiencing rapidly increasing demand.

“In addition, the constant stream of valuable data and consumer insights we access and interpret enables us to quickly adapt our product offer to meet customers’ needs, keeping us ahead of the game.

“All this means we are ideally positioned to make Victoria Plum the most differentiated, most trusted and most respected bathroom provider.”

For further information visit www.victoriaplum.com.