• Home
  • V1
  • Fashion
  • Retailers witness a dip in fall sales

Retailers witness a dip in fall sales

By FashionUnited

loading...

Scroll down to read more

Fashion

According to a recent survey by the Confederation of British Industry, high street sales across the UK have dipped and stalled in the month of October. This caused a sense of disillusionment among retailers, who previously experienced three

months of sales growth. Coinciding with the survey Editd, data analysts for the fashion industry, reported levels of discounting occurring across the fashion segment, as retailers try to deal with the threat unseasonable weather poses on fall/winter sales.

Previously
high street retailers such as John Lewis, Topshop and Matalan voiced their concerns about the previous months unexpected warm weather affecting seasonal sales. Economist at ING Financial Markets, James Knightly, implied that the dip in this month’s sales is most likely due to the warm weather. “October has been far warmer than usual and as such demand for Autumn/Winter clothing has been very weak. As temperatures drop we should see demand for these items strengthen,” he concluded. Matalan recently issued a full-year profit warming, in which Jason Hargreaves, son of the founder states, “The lateness of the summer heat wave and Indian summer throughout September has tempered the start to autumn trading.” Sir Philip Green, owner of Topshop agreed that it had been a “tough month” for the sale of fall and winter fashion.

Warm weather causes decline in seasonal sales

Therefore in order to deal with unexpected dip in sales, some high street retailers have begun offering discount on their current collections, such as Matalan when Hargreaves announced “throughout the remainder of the season we will be investing in lower prices for customers.” Editd revealed that a total of 29.9 percent of women’s wear available online is discounted, while 28.2 percent of men’s wear is on sale (based on in stock products retailing worldwide on the 23rd of October.) The fashion analysts also unveiled e-commerce Asos as one of the biggest discounters at this time, with a total of 38.9 percent of their items on sale, with 11.3 percent of these items 50 percent off. However, in order to capitalize on their discount, Asos has been sending out newsletters and emails promoting their sale, which has resulted in 59 percent of the items on sale being sold out. Outerwear seems to be the weakest selling category of the Fall/Winter collections, as Editd noted 27.6 percent of all outerwear that was offered online in the past three months is currently reduced or on offer. Knitwear, on the other hand seems to be fairing slightly better, with only 21 percent of the winter stock on sale.

However, in the survey the CBI also revealed that ‘robust growth is expected to return next month,’ and reported a majority of retailers placing larger orders for their seasonal stock in with suppliers According to reports from CBI, 24 percent of retailers said that sales volumes were above-average, while 25 percent said they were below-average for the time of the year, giving a balance of minus 2 percent, pointing out that despite the warm weather sales were not that far off from the seasonal norm. Barry Williams the Chair of the CBI distributive trades survey panel added: “It's also encouraging to see that signs are pointing towards increased consumer confidence - backed up by continuing growth in certain areas such as furniture and carpets; recreational goods; footwear and leather - all did particularly well in October.” So even if fashion retailers faced a month of leveled sales, countered by discounted offers, this should be looking up next month.

Vivian Hendriksz