The start of festivity brings a little joy to retailers…unless you’re in fashion
The beginning of the festive season saw a scurry to complete those finishing touches
for the BBQ area and Christmas table, celebrate with workmates and have a little
fun after what has been another trying year.
Surprisingly though, this burst of festive cheer did little for the continuing declines
in fashion…with the fashionista opting to recycle last years cocktail dress or shop
online instead of in department stores, with rumors low store traffic is beginning
to indicate the turn of the market to online.
Moving average growth for the year is at 2.37% (2010 saw 2.5%) and November finished
at 3.06% YOY (October was 3.31%), an uplift thanks to the holiday season but only
4th in line for performance months in 2011.
Specifically supermarket and grocery maintained growth at 4.64% YOY, other specialized
food picked up at 3.91% and Christmas rosy cheeks came early with liquor seeing
a staggering 8.7% YOY growth!
Furniture, floor coverings, houseware and textile was also up 3.94% as was hardware,
building and garden at 4.59% as households got ready for the Christmas season.
Pharmacy saw continued strength at 6.53%, other retailing at 5.95%...with experience
continuing to dominate at 7.11% for other recreational and 8.44% for café/catering
in November…a clear shift from takeaway which fell at -2.58%.
Electrical continues to suffer, although better than we have seen for a while at
-0.88%, while categories such clothing (-4.09%), Footwear and accessory (-2.49%)
and newspaper and book (-11.44%) fell out of favor as gift purchases.
Finally department stores continued to suffer in what should be their most prosperous
months of the year at -4%, cementing the shift of buying behavior of less is more
and buy online is here to stay.
If you would like to understand your category in more detail, your relative performance,
or how to better engage your consumer, RetailOasis has extensive retail experience
and can assist you with future business development based on rigorous quantitative
analysis and insights. Contact Steve Kulmar or Nerida Jenkins at RetailOasis on
+612 9976 6222 or follow the link below to order a report
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