talking trade ‘Yo
You cannot be serious,man!’ Industry commentatorMichaelWeedon drills into the latest reported
retail sales figures and looks to see if they are at fault of a possible recession. The latest BRC [British
Retail Consortium] retail sales figures revealed “the biggest decline in retail sales on record”. The retail sales tracker fromaccountancy and business advisory firmBDO, reporting results from85mid-range retailers with 10,000 stores (about 2% of the total), reportsmonth-on- month gains and is a bitmore optimistic. Now the lovely ONSmakes lifemore difficult here than it needs to, by always quoting “sales volumes” in its headlines. Retailers talk about volumes when they are buying but when you ask how things are going (or they are reporting to investors) it’s all about themoney.
Fortunately, if you ferret around in their stats, you’ll find detailed nationalmonthly cash sales figures.
These are the ones that I started out D
id you know that retail is booming? Really?We have the figures. Not everybody believes themthough.
There is a serious discussion to be had. So, if you have your number head on… in the 12months toMay,
y, UK consumers spent 4%
more with retailers than matching 12months to
May 2018. That’s a cool they did in the
extra 14.5 billion quidmore in the tills, ONS [Office for National Statistics] figures show. Within that total - which includes food, non- food and non-store - large businesses gained 2.9% and smaller shops 7.7%.
summarising, but within the totals are some more detailed breakdowns. The conclusions you reach always have to pay attention to the period over which to track the sums, but year- on-year, while those overall figures rose, alcohol and tobacco, clothing and footwear,
r, r, and
computers and telecoms, all fell. Everything else grew.
If we look just at
found) takings were up 2.8% (£4.7 billion), large non-food (where housewares are largely to be
impressed by actually hitting its target of 2% for, We have to allow for inflation, which recently shops snaffled an extra 5.2% (£2.3 billion). stores gained 2.0% (£2.4 billion) and small
I’mpretty sure, only the second time ever. On that basis, large non-food stores would have
[Consumer Price Index] inflation, so you can see showed gains. Food inflation is still above CPI stood still in real terms, while all the others
one reason why food retailers are doing better
estimates show that last year the UK gained an aremoremouths to feed: the latest population Another reason would have to be that there than non-food stores.
extra 395,000 consumers: a gain of 0.6% for the second year in a row and a continuation of a trend that has held good formore than
crisis. The latest CBI [Confederation of British Yet headlines tell us that retail is in full-on a decade.
2009, which contains a big hint about its view stated that sales fell at their fastest rate since Industry] distributive sales survey for June
46 | housewares evil .net r,
Tracking the subsectorsmonth bymonth within the last year, you start to see some parts of themarket suffering verymixed fortunes, with big ups and big downs. Even the supermarkets have had some duffmonths. Overall though, alcohol and tobacco, clothing and footwear, hardware, audio-visual and music, floorcoverings, books and newspapers, computers and telecoms all had some very negativemonths. It’s here that “Household Goods” as a broad heading joins the club, alth S
r,
o has themoney simply not been spent? Or ough only in the last fivemonths.
has it been spent elsewhere?Well, the ONS lumps all pureplay online sales into “non-store”, so it’s difficult to tell what’s in it (and the ONS will not speculate).
To look a bit closer, we have to use data derived fromactual transactions - and the monthly spending figures from[credit card and payment services provider] Barclaycard shine a bright light on the subsectors.
Now this is an organisation with its eyes on maybe half of all card spending. It says that in 2018, total spending rose 4% - which is right on the nose with the overall ONS figures. It says that the categories that lost out were women’s
discount and “household”. Everything else clothing, department stores, electronics,
overall sector sales into online and in-store - Barclaycard also (because it can) breaks was up.
• Houseware
resLive.net • twitter.
r.com/H /Houseware
and there we can clearly see clothing in particular rising online and falling in-store. Department stores are tightly reliant on fashion sales, and we see that picture there as well. It is in these related sectors that we seemost of the CVAs [Company Voluntary Arrangements] and most of the disaster headlines.
It’s these sectoral differences that explain why the news can be simultaneously bad and good and why national statistics can directly contradict headlines.
Most sectors are getting real, ifmixed growth. But for somemarket segments the news is really bad – and it’smore serious than for others.
Federation of Small Businesses] Retail and High Streets Policy Unit andmanaging director of
• Michael Weedon Is chair of [[F
cy exp xp2 Ltd,
leading trade retailers. He
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including research and report creation for clients in the retail
industry,
providers, place managers and individual established exp association role.
MiMichael’s’s contact detailsls are: Mobile: 074 Email: Mi
ta 7411 763 551 Tw:@michaelweedon Michael.we weedon@exp
xp2.co.uk
y, including data xp2 in 2016 fr
ry from a
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the FSB
resnews
June/July 2019
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