Despite the reopening of the high street and against strong figures for April 2020 (the first full month of the first lockdown, when growth was 44%), online retail sales continued to grow in April, rising by 10.2% year-on-year.
That’s according to the latest IMRG Capgemini Online Retail Index, which tracks the online sales performance of over 200 retailers. However, this does show some evidence of the impact of non-essential shops reopening in the month-on-month (MoM) data, with a decline of 12% from March.
April’s results paint a similarly mixed picture at a category level. In the anticipation of sunshine, socialising and summer holidays, clothing sales continued their reversal in fortunes, up 60.9% overall and as high as 98.9% for womenswear. While this compares to a dramatic drop in sales last year (-25.1%), it does show that people are starting to plan for the end of government restrictions.
On the flip side, April also saw a reduction in health and beauty (-9%), electrical (-3.7%) and garden sales (-13.3%), all of which have been on a run of phenomenal sales since the start of the first government-imposed lockdown. For both electricals and garden, this was the first negative result in 19 and 15 months respectively.
Andy Mulcahy, strategy and insight director at IMRG, said: “What impact did the reopening of the high street have on retail? Several large retailers I have spoken to say the first week was amongst the strongest they have seen across online and retail platforms; one even recorded their biggest day ever overall. While online growth might have dropped away from +70-80% between January and March to +10% in April, this is largely as growth rates are now comparing with pandemic-period rates from 2020, which were so strong that it is hard to build upon that performance.
“In January, we mapped out how growth could look if things go relatively well for online, relatively badly, and somewhere in the middle. In April, retail generally seems to have done well, and the rate of online growth is currently somewhere between average and good in that forecast. As people get more options for spending their money in later May and into June, that will provide a sterner test.”
NAM Implications:
- Suppliers need to make category by category comparisons with their product sales…
- …to check and ensure they are obtaining their fair share of online growth.
- Whatever the result…
- …key will be efficiency and speed of fulfilment.
