Sales accelerate as Zulily masters mobile

Zulily remains a company to watch in the e-commerce world with strong second quarter sales growth coming from existing and new customers on mobile devices.



The Seattle-based company’s value priced offering of apparel, shoes, home décor and gifts resonated with shoppers during the second quarter ended June 29. Sales at the four year old company increased 97% to $285 million and adjusted earnings per share nearly doubled to nine cents from five cents the prior year.



The company also said its active customer base grew 86% to 4.1 million, based on its rather liberal definition of “active” as a customer who purchased something in prior year.



"We saw a significant increase in active customers and orders year over year, leading to a strong second quarter for the company," said Darrell Cavens, CEO of Zulily. "These customers are increasingly shopping with us across platforms, with almost half of our order volume now coming from mobile devices. Mobile is a huge opportunity for us and we'll continue our innovation in this area. We continue to focus on offering more brands and great product diversity that brings our customers back to us again and again."



Total orders placed increased 92% to 5.4 million, but average order value was essentially flat at $53.85. Roughly 84% of all orders in North America were repeat customers and 49% of orders were place on a mobile device in the second quarter compared to 42% the prior year.



Looking ahead, Zulily expects to surpass annual sales of $1 billion this year with a full year forecast in the range of $1.2 billion to $1.225 billion.