Case Study: John Lewis achieves record Black Friday sales with PA Consulting

Making the difference by breaking an all-time sales record

John Lewis partnered with PA Consulting to help ensure its e-commerce platform could cope with major seasonal demand spikes, especially around Black Friday and Christmas Clearance. The challenge was to keep online retail operations stable and high-performing even as traffic surged well beyond normal levels.

PA Consulting continuously worked with John Lewis and partners to optimize the site, plan IT operations for peak events, review the click-and-collect service, and manage the rollout of new IT services without disrupting trading. The result was John Lewis’s biggest ever trading day in its 150-year history, with weekly sales of £179.1 million and online sales up 42% year on year; on Black Friday, the platform handled hundreds of thousands of orders and absorbed a 300% increase in regular online traffic.

John Lewis