THE TRAFFORD Park based Fragrance Shop saw an 11.8 per cent rise in sales over the 2014 Christmas period as compared to 2013.

The Lake Edge Green firm had its busiest day of the year on Christmas Eve, with fragrances by Paco Rabanne making up three of the 10 most sold fragrances over the festive period, with Chanel, YSL, Gucci and Thierry Mugler all forming part of the top 10 list, with underlying like for like sales up 5 per cent

Multichannel retailing is continuing to fuel sales, with strong growth from customers using its click and collect service to place orders online and collect in-store.

The Fragrance Shop’s Try It First service, which sees customers receive a fragrance sample with their order, which they can try before opening the main bottle – and can return the main bottle if they don’t like it – enables them to experience the same level of sampling as they would in a store via online shopping.

Adding an extra 18 stores to its growing portfolio in 2014, the Trafford based retailer opened its 171st store in December – and won a prestigious Pure Beauty ‘Best Store Design’ award for its new concept flagship, Indulge Fragrance Boutique, based at the Intu Trafford Centre, seeing off competition from Tesco and Superdrug.

Sanjay Vadera, the firm's chief executive said: "Our Christmas trading figures demonstrate that The Fragrance Shop continues to be first for fragrance. Our drive for innovation in the fragrance retailing industry has seen us launch a one hour ‘Click and Collect’ service while expanding our store portfolio. Our continued passion for fragrance, with highly trained staff both in our stores and our dedicated customer service team, really does make us First For Fragrance.”

Pete King, managing director, added: “Our growing portfolio of stores, coupled with our industry knowledge and continuing work to understand our customers has helped us add fragrance ranges and services that deliver an excellent experience for existing and new customers.

“Black Friday saw an earlier surge in sales this year, bringing trading forward, but last minute sales continued to give us our largest sales days with Christmas Eve proving the busiest day of the year.”

The company began with a single store in 1995 and now has 171 shops across the UK with plans to continue to grow its store portfolio in 2015 with 25 new stores.

In the year to the end of March, 2014, annual sales climbed by 11.2 per cent to £90.1million.