The iceman cometh to the high street

Sales figures from BDO’s Like-for-Like Club for the week ending 8 February 2009 were as follows:

• Non-fashion: -8.3%
  Footfall was down significantly resulting in the sharpest decline in non-fashion sales this year.  Given last week’s weather conditions, these results are not as bad as anticipated and again the luxury end of the market continued to hold up.
• Fashion: -23.1%
  Fashion retailers bore the brunt of the storm with sales down by nearly a quarter on this time last year with pretty much every retailer experiencing lower demand.  Inevitability the weather was a big contributing factor to these lower results, more than offsetting any underlying gains arising from another cut in interest rates
• Homewares: -4.3%
  Despite a reduction in sales, there were some tentative signs of improvement particularly amongst furniture and lighting retailers.

Rupert Eastell, Head of Retail at BDO, says: “The recent run of positive results came to a grinding halt this week as heavy snow in most parts of the country seriously affected sales.”

“Many shopping districts were described as virtual ghost towns for much of the week, with the snow causing huge disruption to the transport network.  As a result, all three sectors witnessed decreases, with fashion retailers in particular experiencing a very bad week,” points out Eastell.

“Although there was some evidence of a pick-up in online activity, with many consumers stuck at home all week, this upturn was not strong enough to offset the fall in store based sales.  Despite a slightly more upbeat feeling amongst consumers, with bad weather also forecast for much of the coming week, we suspect sales will continue to struggle in the near term,” continued Eastell.

Sales compared to this week last year
“Sales were surprisingly buoyant this week last year, with both non-fashion (+7.4 per cent) and fashion (+7.5 per cent) retailers experiencing a strong upturn in demand.  Helpful weather and a cut in interest rates were the main reasons for this performance.  In contrast, homewares remained negative (-5.7 per cent) with little sign of any recovery,” concluded Eastell.

ENDS

For more information, please contact Dee Crooks at BDO on 020 7893 2761 / 07815 172 051 or email dee.crooks@bdo.co.uk

Notes to editors:

BDO’s Like-for-Like Club outlines weekly sales changes of more than 60 mid market retailers with some 4,500 individual stores. These are mainly located on high streets through the UK. The results are published every Friday.

BDO LLP operates across the UK with over 3,000 partners and staff. BDO LLP is a UK limited liability partnership and the UK Member Firm of BDO International. BDO international is a world-wide network of public accounting firms, called BDO Member Firms. Each BDO Member Firm is an independent legal entity in its own country. The network is coordinated by BDO Global Coordination B.V., incorporated in The Netherlands, with its statutory seat in Eindhoven (trade register registration number 33205251) and with an office at Boulevard de la Woluwe 60, 1200 Brussels, Belgium, where the International Executive Office is located. In the UK the Belfast Firm is operated by a separate Partnership known as BDO - Belfast.

BDO LLP and BDO - Belfast are both authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority to conduct investment business.

BDO is an award winning firm.  Recent achievements include:

• Best Workplace UK - Financial Times 2008
• 100 Best Companies to Work For - The Sunday Times 2008
• Audit Team of the Year – Accountancy Age Awards 2008
• Tax Team of the Year – Accountancy Age Awards 2008
• Corporate Finance Deal of the Year – Accountancy Age Awards 2008
• Employer of the Year – Accountancy Age Awards 2007
• The Women of Achievement Award –  Women in the City 2008
• Top 50 Where Women Want to Work - The Times 2007
• Business Superbrand - Business Superbrands 2008