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A.S. Watson Group (ASW), the largest international health and beauty retailer in Asia and Europe, has annouced that it delivered a 47% increase in health and beauty sales in 2016 across its global eCommerce businesses. UK subsidiary Superdrug saw online sales rise 60% in 2016.

In May 2014 the Group announced plans to accelerate its digital and CRM strategy with an initial investment of $60m, which was channelled into attracting digital talent to its in-house digital studio eLab, responsible for improving the mobile customer experience, rolling-out mobile apps, integrating social into the total customer experience, improving content, and expanding click and collect in most countries.

Digital now plays a vital part supporting ASW's brick-and-mortar business model, which spans over 13,300 stores in 25 markets.

Malina Ngai, Chief Operating Officer of A.S. Watson Group, says:  "What's encouraging for us is that we are not only seeing high online sales growth, but also increased footfall in our stores, combined with a high annual spend from our loyalty card customers who shop with us both offline and online. In the UK, for example, our Superdrug business achieved a high single digit like-for-like sales growth of 7.2% for the five weeks ended 2 January 2017 while growing its online business by 47% in the same period."

ASW's eCommerce businesses in Europe delivered a 42% sales increase in 2016, with cosmetics up 63%. Black Friday was particularly successful, with sales up 103%  and four orders processed every five seconds.

In Asia, ASW delivered health and beauty eCommerce sales growth of 69% in 2016 driven by good participation from its loyalty programmes - 48 million loyalty card customers engaged with ASW eCommerce channels in 2016. In Hong Kong, the health category grew by 70% in 2016, so to capture this opportunity in other territories, eLab has launched and upgraded the health elements of its other eCommerce sites to offer more choice in health and wellbeing products.

Malina Ngai, Chief Operating Officer of A.S. Watson Group, says: €We will continue to strive for technological innovation, such as product search by image and cognitive computing, which are essential to being close to customers and meeting their fast-changing expectations. To stay ahead of the market, we keep harnessing technological developments to create a personalised and pleasurable online shopping experience for customers, and drive seamless integration with the ASW store network.€