Can JD’s retail magician Peter Cowgill cast spell over America?

JD Sports is starting to look like the star striker on a nothing team.

With much of the rest of the retail sector mired in gloom, the company reported that sales on a like-for-like basis, a measure that excludes new openings, jumped by 5 per cent in the 48 weeks to January 5 (they were 15 per cent higher overall).

Given that the first half of the year showed a 3 per cent rise, that signifies an acceleration in the second half and a happy Christmas, which the retailer referenced in its trading update.

It’s quite something when set against the rest of the high street, which has been beating a path to the Treasury’s door to lobby for new taxes on online retailers, or cuts to the levies they face, or both before (in some cases) taking a taxi round to their bankers to plead for forbearance.

What JD has again proven is that it’s possible to succeed, even in a very tough climate, if you know your customers and serve up what they want.

That isn’t quite as easy as it might look. JD’s shoppers tend to be youngish, and with sufficient disposable income to spend on fancy trainers and other sports kit. These people can be fickle.

The business has, however, been smart enough to keep on top of the trends that sweep that market on a regular basis, and it’s done so for a number of years. Its impressive numbers speak to that.

Compare JD to, say, M&S, which doesn’t appear to know who its customers are, much less what they want.

Compare it too to Sports Direct. Although, the competitor occupies a slightly different niche, and its core business has been performing creditably enough, it’s not in the same league as JD.

How much better could SD could have done if boss Mike Ashley, who’s been messing around with failing department store chains like House of Fraser and Debenhams, had the same sort of focus as JD’s executive chairman Peter Cowgill? It’s a question worth asking.

But here’s where it starts to get interesting. Cowgill has ambitions just as Ashley does. Where the latter seems to want to be king of the UK high street, the former is looking across the Atlantic at the rock on which so many UK retailers have dashed themselves on.

America is a huge market, which is why it’s so attractive. It dangles like a jewel in front of the eyes of retail executives. But they consistently get it wrong and end up in retreat after blowing enough to cash to fit in the hold of the QE2.

JD has been resting its hopes on the acquisition of Finish Line, an American retailer that has had its fair share of problems. Three of the latter’s stores have been turned into JD outlets, in addition to two new openings. The company says it’s “encouraged” by their performance which, let’s be honest, could mean anything.

Making a success of America while keeping the UK firing on all cylinders in the midst of Brexit will be quite the trick. But Cowgill might just be the magician to pull it off.