Summer T-Shirts Contribute to Rise in UK Retail Sales

Wednesday 13th of May 2009 08:02:37 PM

Summer T-Shirts Contribute to Rise in UK Retail Sales

Summer t-shirts contributed to a rise in UK retail sales in April. That may not sound like a major accomplishment unless you consider the fact that the UK economy has been laboring under the recession and April 2009 retail sales were the highest they have been in over a year. It wasn’t just t-shirts and polo shirts though that helped retail sales figures improve. It was the general category of summer clothes.

Retail sales rose by 6.3 percent over the last three months. The increase was primarily attributed to clothing and food sales. There were also increases in the sales of non-food seasonal items like those for gardening. The British Retail Consortium and KPMG reported food sales increased by 6.9 percent in the first quarter of 2009. Overall non-food sales fell by .9 percent for the same time period. It was the sales of items like summer tees that kept the number so low for the non-food sales category. When comparing non-food retail sales for the first quarter of 2009 to the fourth quarter of 2008, it is .9 percent instead of 5.1 percent. This shows the significant progress made to date.

Helen Dickenson of KPMG was quoted as saying, “But the rise in sales adds to the sense that consumers have been happier to shop in this recession than many had feared. We are not falling off a cliff in the same way some thought we might at the end of last year. People aren’t reining in spending as much as some expected.” She also said that consumers have more to spend because fuel and utility prices have been falling. Unfortunately, despite the retail numbers, retailers are not particularly optimistic about sales for the remainder of the year.(c) Image by Keith Syvinski, www.sxc.hu/