Sales at Manchester online beauty retailer Beauty Bay dropped by almost £40m last year as customers returned to the high street stores following the end of Covid-19 restrictions.
Beauty Bay posted a turnover of £93m for the 12 months to March 31, 2022, down from the £134.4m it achieved during the previous year.
The etailer remained upbeat, however, as the latest figure is still above the £82.2m it reported for the year prior to Covid, to March 31, 2020.
The company said in a statement that the fall in its turnover was “primarily driven by a return to more normalised levels of customer acquisition and orders post-Covid following an exceptional increase in levels of new customer acquisition in the prior year where customers switched away from traditional High Street retail to online retail to purchase beauty products during the Covid lockdown period”.
The latest accounts, filed with Companies House on Friday, also showed that the business fell to a pre-tax loss of £9.3m in the year after making a £9.2m profit in the prior 12 months.
A statement signed off by the board said: “The group remains focused on delivering profitable future growth and has continued to drive increased order values and cash margins per order together with delivering continuous improvement and cost optimisation programmes to deliver a number of significant cost savings post year-end.”
Beauty Bay was founded in 1999 by brothers Arron and David Gabbie and sells makeup, skincare, bath and body, haircare, gifts and other accessories.
