Christmas cheer on the high street defies economic gloom

Late festive season sales bounce before retailers knuckle down for “tough year”

After months of negative sales growth, BDO’s December High Street Sales Tracker recorded a healthy 4.9% year on year, like-for-like sales increase at the UK’s mid-tier retailers.

Christmas falling on a Sunday meant an extra pre-Christmas trading day this year and shoppers responded with a late surge in the fourth week in December. This was helped by widespread discounting on a par with 2008 but, in most instances, more planned. Like-for-like fashion sales jumped 6.5% and homewares rose by nearly 9.3%.

Non-store sales leapt nearly a third on the same period in 2010 (29%). Non-fashion was the only sector to miss out on the spending bonanza, but sales refused to drop, staying flat.

Don Williams, National Head of Retail and Wholesale at BDO LLP, said while the figures were flattered by poor figures from last year, the results were still comfortably ahead of expectations.

“Although the year-on-year figures are boosted by weak comparisons due largely to heavy snowfall in December 2010, these results show you can’t keep good shoppers down forever.” said Williams. “Many retailers made the best use of the tools at their disposal and gave shoppers as many incentives as they could to get them through the door. One hopes the mass discounting hasn’t dented their margins too badly

“We have again seen that retailers that have embraced and enhanced their multi-channel offer have been able to steal a march on their competitors. However, the year ahead will be tough and we expect some more retail failures in the next quarter, especially of those who have gone through a previous restructuring without really addressing their core product and service offerings, but these figures do show there’s still life on the high street.”

 

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The BDO High Street Sales Tracker analyses like-for-like spending at non-grocery retailers with annual sales of between £5m and £500m

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