John Lewis is almost half way towards its aim of building a £500 million-a-year internet business after recording its biggest ever week of sales.

The department store group took £10 million in online orders for the first time last week — 70 per cent ahead of the same seven days a year ago.

Internet sales were set to pass the £200 million mark for the year so far yesterday and are expected to hit about £280 million by February — 10 per cent of the retailer's turnover.

Phil Hullah, the commercial director, told The Times that John Lewis Direct had finally “come of age” after its low-key launch six years ago.

“There’s still an awful long way to go for us but we believe it has reached a really significant scale,” he said. “We are now for the first time seeing the two channels of internet and shops working well together.”

The figures are the first firm signs from the retail sector that the strong growth in online sales forecast for Christmas is taking place, despite fears over the economy.

Verdict earlier this month said that it expected online sales across the UK to be 40 per cent up on last year at £5 billion in the final three months of the year.

Mr Hullah said that the strongest growth at John Lewis Direct in recent weeks had come in home electronics, such as iPods, high-definition televisions and Nintendo Wii game consoles, as well as toys.

Sales of furniture accessories surged 95 per cent last week.

John Lewis has boosted the range of products on sale over the internet to 30,000 this Christmas, a tenth of the amount on offer in store, but Mr Hullah said that sales on a like-for-like basis were still up by 50 per cent. It expects to add a further 10,000 products to the offer next year and hopes to hit £500m sales a year by 2012.

The growth of the group’s internet business has been key in helping John Lewis to capture customers from outside the catchment area of its 26 department stores.

The group wants to open 26 more sites over the next decade and Mr Hullah said that internet sales had been taken into consideration when deciding where to locate the stores.

About 20 per cent of the sales achieved so far come from homeowners at least 60 miles away from a store.

A growing number of orders are placed by ex-pats for delivery in the UK. Mr Hullah said that the group may one day consider international deliveries.

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