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Spending on home improvement is boosting sales figures, confirms Bira


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Bira is backing findings from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) that spending on homeware and DIY is boosting retail sales figures. The ONS released its retail


report for August 2020, revealing a fourth consecutive month of growth, with sales up by 0.8% when compared with July.


The report, published today


(September 18) said spending on home improvements continued to rise in August as sales volumes within household goods stores increased by 9.9% when compared with February. Andrew Gooadcre, Bira’s


CEO, said: “We welcome the growth and we know from our own membership that DIY, homeware and cookware sectors have been trading well, especially in the local areas.” However, despite the


positive outlook, Bira warned some sectors were still


Home retail gets boost due to consumers catching DIY bug


Latest research conducted by Love Home Swap, a leading members-only, global home- sharing platform, has revealed how Brits took to DIY during lockdown, resulting in a surge in demand for the home retail sector that is expected to continue as people look to improve their living environment. More than three quarters of


respondents said they spent time improving their home in lockdown which is reflected by the 200% increase in online sales cited by homeware stores during the same period. Half of those surveyed had improved and tidied up their


garden and a quarter had made renovations to furnishings inside their home or cosmetic change to décor. Around one in 10 had gone further and made significant improvements to their outdoor space with decking or a summer house during lockdown. Whilst almost 10% had decided to purchase high value items for their home such as a pizza oven. To accommodate their new way of living, one in ten respondents said they had added a home office and 8% a home gym. Results from the survey also suggest that rather than just a


Rule of six does not deter shoppers


Latest data from retail experts Springboard reveals that footfall across UK retail destinations rose by +2.4% last week from the week before. This week marked the first full week of the "rule of six" being in force, but appeared not to dent the confidence of consumers to make trips to bricks and mortar retail destinations. High streets saw a particularly positive rise in footfall of +5.2%. The rise in high street footfall across all UK geographies varied greatly ranging from just +0.9% in Wales and +1.2% in the South East to +9.6% in Scotland and +12.2% in Northern Ireland. Shopping centres and retails


September 2020


parks across the UK saw, in contrast, a footfall decline of over -0.8% and -0.3% respectively. The range of results across the different types of high street suggests that the UK made the most of the warm weekend weather as market towns, which have been benefiting from consumers staying locally more, saw a rise in footfall of +1.5%, whilst in Central London footfall rose by +6%, by +7.3% in historic towns and by +4.4% in coastal towns. However, despite this rise in footfall from the week before, the gap from last year widened slightly further with a year on year decline in footfall of -28.7% versus -27.5% in the week


• HousewaresLive.net


before. Retail parks continued to far outperform high streets and shopping centres,


with footfall 12.5% lower than last year compared with annual declines in high streets and shopping centres of -34.3% and -32.6% respectively . Although there was also an improvement in


Central London last week, footfall there remains 56.1% lower than last year, versus 45.3% lower in regional cities and 22.6% lower in market towns.


• twitter.com/Housewaresnews housewareslive.net | 7


lockdown fad, this new interest in home improvement is here to stay as Brits are now looking at their homes in a different light. The survey uncovered that more than half of all the respondents agreed that they are looking to improve their work / life balance in the long- term, with a significant 45% agreeing that assessing their work / life balance has made them look for more ‘leisure value’ from their homes.


struggling. Goodacre added: “We are


very concerned by the decline in sales of clothing, and it is clear that online shopping in this sector has grown significantly and will remain at high levels.


“Our thoughts now turn to ensuring that retailers do everything they can to keep retailing safe to avoid a second national lockdown. Closures in the build up to Christmas would be disastrous and we need clarity from the Government.”


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