Listed eCommerce brand ASOS has posted its annual results and has stated its commitment to investment in tech.
The online fashion brand reported a 15 per cent growth in UK sales in the year ending 31 August 2019, alongside 12 per cent growth in the EU, 9 per cent growth in the US 12 per cent growth in the rest of the world.
Its group revenues grew by 13 per cent to £2.7bn.
The firm attributed its growth to a range of new technological investments, which included adding new payment methods such as Afterpay in Australia and New Zealand, Yandex in Russia and Klarna solution in the US.
It also highlighted investments in returns processing software, having launched a pilot for a paperless QR code system which replaced returns labels in the UK.
It said it also continues to invest in its own retail planning and merchandising system, which it calls the Truly Global Retail (TGR) programme.
“TGR is a key component in supporting our global growth ambitions,” said the firm in a statement.
“Given the scale of change associated with this programme going live, we are planning a phased implementation as well as a parallel run of the more complex technical changes, allowing for more time to identify technical issues before the business starts to use the systems at scale”.
“Investments in efficiency and productivity will continue to be a focus as we look to further embed process optimisation and automation,” the company said in a statement.”
At the end of last year the firm reported 14 per cent growth in quarterly sales but warned that it needed to recalibrate expectations due to performance “significantly behind expectations”.
Nick Beighton, CEO of ASOS said the year had been made unsteady by new tech adoption but outlook was positive.
“This financial year was a pivotal period for ASOS, where we have invested significantly and enhanced our global platform capability to drive our future growth,” he wrote.
“Regrettably this was more disruptive than we originally anticipated.
“However, having identified the root causes of our operational issues, we have made substantial progress over the last few months in resolving them.
“Whilst there remains lots of work to be done to get the business back on track, we are now in a more positive position to start the new financial year.
Beighton said the firm’s focus has now shifted to increasing its capability to drive better customer experience through its new global-ready tech investments.
“With over 60 per cent of our revenue coming from international customers and a strong global logistics platform with capacity to grow, we are well positioned to take advantage of the global growth opportunity ahead of us.”