UK online retail sales soar to 10-yr high: IMRG Capgemini

21 May '20

2 min read

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As COVID-19 shut UK stores, online sales growth in April surged by a 10-year high of 23.8 per cent year on year (YoY), according to the latest IMRG Capgemini Online Retail Index, which tracks online sales performance of over 200 retailers. The story was, however, not so positive for the clothing sector, whose monthly sales sunk by 23.8 per cent YoY in April.

Within this, footwear and menswear sales were particularly poor, down by 31.1 per cent and 33.5 per cent respectively.

The spike in overall sales was overwhelmingly driven by multichannel retailers.

After recording higher growth than their online only counterparts for the first time in a year in March, multichannel retailers continue to benefit from consumers’ changing shopping habits, with sales up by 35 per cent versus online only retailers’ more modest rise of 8.3 per cent, a press release from Capgemini said.

“April’s data shows that demand is following a very logical pattern–with stores closed, people who would usually shop in physical locations have no choice but to switch online. Hence, it is the multichannel retailers who are securing the very strong growth at the moment, though whether it will be enough to entirely offset the loss of sales from those stores seems unlikely. This is only true for some categories though; even with stores closed, online growth for multichannel clothing retailers is still down by 17.5 per cent. The demand just isn’t there at the moment,” Andy Mulcahy, strategy and insight director, IMRG, said.

“When that demand will return is a big question for clothing retailers. If they reopen stores–and take their staff out of furlough, bringing all the costs back into the business – but their customers don’t return quickly, there could be a very difficult period coming indeed,” he added.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)

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