Heavy rain and high inflation hit UK retail sales in July, forcing firms to cut prices, a survey showed on Tuesday, 8th August.
According to the British Retail Consortium (BRC)/KPMG monthly survey, retail sales values increased 1.5 per cent year over year, down from this year’s peak of 5.2 per cent from February and below the 12-month average growth rate of 3.9 per cent. Retailers are being obliged to run more deals in an effort to draw in price-conscious shoppers.
In what is often a strong season for them, clothing and footwear merchants reported a decline in sales, which helped to drive down overall non-food sales by 0.5 per cent in the three months leading up to July.
Consumers have largely coped with the cost-of-living squeeze so far but “stubbornly high inflation coupled with rapidly rising interest rates will test their ability and willingness to keep on spending for the rest of this year,” Paul Martin, the UK Head of Retail at KPMG said.
The unusually warm July weather hindered the clothing industry, which saw a 3.1 per cent fall. Six out of ten people who are reducing discretionary spending to deal with growing household expenses say they are limiting their purchases of new clothing and accessories.
With only 42 per cent of parents of school-age children planning to purchase brand-new things this year, the back-to-school season is not anticipated to reverse this drop. As an alternative, many parents may purchase used uniforms online (23 per cent), or they will purchase clothing from families whose children are older and have outgrown their own (23 per cent). Three out of ten parents also intend to donate their kids’ old school clothes to families that are unable to purchase new ones.
