Womenswear sees 98% rise in online sales

The prospect of leaving the house and mixing outside of the bubble has seen online women's clothing sales rocket up by as much as 98% in April. On the flip-side, health and beauty, electronics and garden ware all saw falls as shoppers went in-store instead. Despite the reopening of the high street and against strong figures for April 2020, online retail sales continue to grow in April 2021, rising by +10.2% Year-on-Year (YoY).

Consumers gear up for going out

In the anticipation of sunshine, socialising and summer holidays, clothing sales continued their reversal in fortunes, up +60.9% overall. This was 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.

Negative results for other industries

There was some evidence of the impact of non-essential shops reopening in the Month-on-Month (MoM) data. This showed a decline of -12% from March. A slight decline is typical between March and April, usually around -1%.

There were marked reductions 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 electronics and garden, this was the first negative result in approximately 1,5 years.

Clothing continues to rebound

Clothing continues to rebound, up +50% and +70% across multichannel and online only respectively as pent-up demand combines with increased consumer confidence. Overall, the story this month is a positive one for retail as consumers start to emerge from their homes. Online will remain key in the future. However, comparators over the next few months will be challenging to match.

In April, retail generally seems to have done well. In addition, the rate of online sales growth is currently somewhere between average and good in that forecast. As people get more options for spending their money at the end of May and into the beginning of June, that will provide a sterner test.