John Lewis smashed its single day's sales record during post-Christmas clearance, with sales on December 27 up 30% on the retailer's previous biggest-ever day, December 27, 2008.
This followed strong sales in online clearance, which began at 5pm on Christmas Eve, and saw online sales up 42% with more than four products sold every second.

On Christmas Day, johnlewis.com saw record visitor numbers, up by 25%, while sales increased by 45%.

Commenting on the first three full days of clearance (December 27-29), director of selling operations Nat Wakely said: "We have had a fantastic start to clearance with both December 27 and 28 beating our previous record for a single day's sales. We saw sales of £27.8m on December 27 which is up 54% on the same day last year (which was a Sunday) but more significantly it is up 30% on our previous biggest-ever day, which was December 27, 2008.

The home directorate saw pillows selling at a rate of one every five seconds, while duvets sold at a rate of one every 10 seconds.

The retailer's clearance success followed a strong pre-Christmas week (ending December 25), which saw sales of £97.1m, up 30.6% on the same week last year.