An evolving industry: emerging trends in festive fashion retail

The festive shopping season is traditionally the busiest time of year for retailers, both online and on the high street.

Last year however, fashion retailers were caught out by a blast of unseasonal weather and saw a significant fall in sales volume, down 4.2 percent compared to 2014. According to the Office for National Statistics, this decline in Christmas sales figures was attributed to mild weather denting demand for clothing and footwear, as well as high levels of discounting.

Some fashion retailers did manage to weather the storm. Online fashion retailers significantly outperformed their traditional bricks-and-mortar counterparts, according to data from the British Retail Consortium and KPMG, and reaped the rewards of the Christmas purchase period. So is this indicative of the evolution of fashion retail at Christmas, and if so, will we see a repeat this year?

Convenience is king

According to our Christmas Trends Report 2016, the vast majority of consumers will do at least some gift shopping online, with almost 20 percent using online exclusively. The shift to online shopping is nothing new, but it is accelerating - according to e-Marketer, online shopping is expected to account for a fifth of all festive season retail sales this year, up from 17.8 percent last year. Consumers nowadays expect their shopping experience to effortlessly fit into their everyday lives.

Put simply, large crowds and long queues are a turn-off, with more than two thirds of consumers saying they are the biggest bugbear when it comes to high street shopping. Convenience eclipses everything, and there is nothing more convenient than shopping from the comfort of a sofa, particularly with savvy retailers who have invested heavily in both their online offering and delivery supply chain.

In 2015, British fashion retailer Joules delivered strong sales over the festive period, with total revenue up 11.3 percent against the comparable period of the previous year. Much of this success was attributed to the business’s investment in its e-commerce platform just before Christmas.

That’s not to say of course that the high-street store has become redundant. In fact, it still has an important role to play. The big winners this Christmas will be those who recognise the importance of seamless omnichannel retailing - blending the personal showroom qualities of brick-and-mortar stores with new ‘on-the-go’ personalised mobile app technology to give consumers the complete experience, whatever the weather.

Christmas is no longer one single calendar moment

The Christmas shopping period now stretches for longer than ever before.

Our research shows that Black Friday, traditionally the day after Thanksgiving in the US, is the starting gun for the Christmas shopping period. Clothing, footwear and accessories (45.6 percent) are second only to electronic goods (59.7 percent) for Black Friday buying, and more than a quarter of consumers say it’s the date on which they begin their festive buying.

But after transforming the pre-Christmas shopping landscape for the past three years, this year we saw signs of falling consumer expectations. Our research has found that Black Friday hasn’t necessarily led to people spending more than they used to - they are just shopping at different times and spreading the cost over a longer period. With Amazon starting their Black Friday sales up to a fortnight before the big day, and many other major retailers following suit, it is no longer the one-day whirlwind it once was.

With the potential trend, therefore, for spending to be more evenly spread in the months leading up to Christmas, fashion retailers need to be wary of falling into the trap of bowing to pressure too early with heavily discounted lines that might shift stock but don’t do much for profit margins.

You only need to take a page out of the Debenhams playbook to see the benefits of standing firm against heavy discounting – a 3.5 percent rise in like-for-like sales for the nine weeks to 9 January thanks to holding off on the big sales until the New Year.

Guy Chiswick is Managing Director of Webloyalty, Northern Europe. He has 17 years’ experience in marketing and advertising and has worked for some of the industry's biggest brands as well as emerging start-ups.

Guy leads a diverse team of experts focussed on client development and category growth, and has spearheaded Webloyalty's retail and multichannel client engagement strategy since joining in 2010.

Webloyalty is a leading provider of online savings programmes designed to help companies build stronger, more profitable relationships.

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