However, suppliers have told The Australian Financial Review that Myer “traded well” over Christmas, despite pulling back on discounting.
David Jones’ lacklustre sales follow recent downgrades from Wesfarmers’ Kmart, outdoor clothing chain Kathmandu and women’s-wear retailer PAS Group and are likely to add to fears about the upcoming profit season and outlook for the full year, following an unprecedented fall in foot traffic in December.
Significant decline
According to ShopperTrak, which measures foot-fall in shopping centres, customer traffic fell 15 per cent in the week ending December 23 and 23 per cent in the week ending December 30, dragging traffic for December down 12.2 per cent, well below the 12-month average decline of 2.2 per cent.
Analysts have warned against reading too much into the foot-traffic data, saying it is not highly correlated with Australian Bureau of Statistics retail sales figures, and that the fall in traffic partly reflects the fact more consumers are browsing and shopping online instead of in-store.
However, retailers contacted by the Financial Review say the ShopperTrak figures reflect a sharp drop in sales in their stores just before Christmas and on Boxing Day, with Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotions in late November pulling forward retail sales from December into November.
“The foot-traffic fall was unprecedented – I don’t think anybody who has been in Australian retail for long has seen a decline of that significance over a peak trading period,” said Martin Matthews, chief executive of Brand Collective, which owns brands such as Superdry, Mossimo, Volley and Shoes & Sox.
“Shoppers once used malls to browse; now they’re doing that online,” he said.
Sales growth also slowed at David Jones’ sister chain Country Road Group before Christmas. Total sales for the 26 weeks to December 23 rose 2.3 per cent, compared with 3.4 per cent in the first 20 weeks, and same-store sales rose 0.5 per cent.
from Just News Viral http://bit.ly/2RCqDPq
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