Warmer weather lifts UK footwear sector
08/05/2013
The most popular items included women’s slippers, which reveals a lot about the weather impact. Summer ranges – flat shoes, sandals and mules – picked up towards the end of the month and conversion rates from footfall to sales improved significantly.
Helen Dickinson, director general of the British Retail Consortium, said: “Ultimately, sales growth was up on the previous month’s weak performance, confirming that was a short-lived blip. Some retailers said they were moving away from the heavy online discounting which suggests confidence in longer-term levels of demand.”
The footwear sector was the best-performing of eight UK retail sectors every month last year, but has struggled to achieve the same results this year – partly as it is up against a high base.
David McCorquodale, head of retail at consultancy KPMG, which supplies the figures, said: “This was always going to be a tricky month. As predicted, April’s sales have been negatively affected by Easter falling in March this year and so statistically the figures, with like-for-like sales down 2.2 per cent, look depressing when compared with last year’s rain soaked April.
“While footwear sales continued to struggle early in the month with winter’s bite continuing, the arrival of spring delivered some light relief for the fashion sector. We hope for more good weather and good news over May and June as retailers will look for a strong performance after last year’s early summer deluge.”
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