IMRG Capgemini eRetail Sales Index: Late Easter spells subdued growth for online retail in March

Across the sectors the impact of a late Easter was most apparent in Home and Garden, which saw its impressive growth trajectory from earlier in the year slow to just +1.6% YoY. Meanwhile despite a strong performance in Footwear (+16.7%), the Clothing sector continued its five-month run of single digit growth (+3.7%), and both Electricals and Gifts saw sales plummet by -26% and -22.1% respectively.

In contrast Health and Beauty had yet another strong month of sales (+15.6% YoY), with Beauty outperforming the rest of the sectors with a +19.8% increase – perhaps due to a few celebrity beauty line launches last month.

Bhavesh Unadkat, principal consultant in retail customer engagement, Capgemini: “March 19 growth at 5% may seem slow but we were up against a very strong March 18.  More concerning is the overall position of clothing – which continued its five-month run of single digit growth (+3.7%for March 19).  Many of the larger, often reliably robust, retailers also recorded low single-digit growth. Closing out Q1, Clothing now stands at 2.6% growth, significantly lower than last year’s 13.9% growth.  This performance is a mix of supply outweighing demand, continued discounting and customers being cautious with spending.

The Beauty market was the stand-out result this month, reporting 19.8% growth, bringing the sector to 16.8% growth for Q1. However, with Home and Garden also seeing poor results due to the late Easter break and a continued decline in Electricals the overall performance was lacklustre.  It will be interesting to see whether the Easter holiday will boost April figures enough to spring some life back into this year’s spending.”

Andy Mulcahy, strategy and insight director, IMRG: “While on the surface of it +5% growth may not seem very positive, there are actually two possible interpretations. On the one hand it looks bad as it’s below the 3-, 6- and 12-month rolling averages of +7.5%, +7.1% and +10.2% respectively; it’s also the lowest of the first quarter of 2019. On the other hand, this growth is against a strong base from March 2018, which featured Easter (home and garden online sales were down -15% in the equivalent week in March this year) and freezing temperatures that kept people away from high streets and boosted online sales in 2018.

“As Easter falls in April this year, the growth rate for that month will determine whether March’s performance can be considered good, bad or indifferent given those factors – not to mention the continuing general macro-economic pressures on retail.”

–ENDS-

About the ‘IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index’

The IMRG Capgemini Index, which was started in April 2000, tracks ‘online sales’, which we define as ‘transactions completed fully, including payment, via interactive channels’ from any location, including in-store.

About IMRG

For over 20 years, IMRG (Interactive Media in Retail Group) has been the voice of e-retail in the UK. We are a membership community comprising businesses of all sizes – multichannel and pureplay, SME and multinational, and solution providers to industry. We support our members through a range of activities – including market tracking and insight, benchmarking and best practice sharing. Our indexes provide in-depth intelligence on online sales, mobile sales, delivery trends and over 40 additional KPIs. Our goal is to ensure our members have the information and resources they need to succeed in rapidly-evolving markets – both domestically and internationally. www.imrg.org

About Capgemini

A global leader in consulting, technology services and digital transformation, Capgemini is at the forefront of innovation to address the entire breadth of clients’ opportunities in the evolving world of cloud, digital and platforms. Building on its strong 50-year heritage and deep industry-specific expertise, Capgemini enables organizations to realize their business ambitions through an array of services from strategy to operations. Capgemini is driven by the conviction that the business value of technology comes from and through people. It is a multicultural company of over 200,000 team members in more than 40 countries. The Group reported 2018 global revenues of EUR 13.2 billion.

Visit us at www.capgemini.com. People matter, results count.