Clothing retailers blame unseasonal heat and nervous shoppers for a weak month, and the Christmas quarter now looks like a tightrope.
LONDON, England (Link and Lace) – Britain’s weather has once again out-manoeuvred the British fashion calendar. Retailers spent months preparing autumn and winter ranges, the shoppers were meant to arrive in search of a warm layer, and the thermometer declined to cooperate. The official retail figures for September now put numbers on the awkwardness.
What the statisticians found
The Office for National Statistics, in its September retail sales bulletin, reports that sales volumes fell 0.4 percent on the previous month, though they were up 0.8 percent on a year earlier. Across the whole third quarter, volumes rose 0.7 percent on the second quarter. Clothing and footwear stores were among the sectors that lost ground, and the bulletin says retailers pointed to lower footfall and customers cutting back.
The weather explanation comes directly from the shops themselves. Online clothing retailers told the ONS that their autumn and winter ranges “did not perform well because of the unseasonably warm weather,” and mail order sales fell in the month. The bulletin adds that the Met Office put the month as the joint-fourth warmest September on record.
One number, two measures
The size of the clothing hit depends on who is counting. The Press Association’s report, carried by Hargreaves Lansdown, says clothing and footwear sales volumes dropped 0.9 percent in September, and that economists had expected a smaller fall of 0.1 percent for retail overall. Meanwhile, Retail Times quotes PwC’s head of retail, Jacqueline Windsor, saying fashion retailers fared worst, with sales down 1.7 percent.
These figures are not the same thing, and I would not try to reconcile them. One appears to describe clothing and footwear volumes in the official series, the other a wider view of fashion retail, and the sources do not explain the gap. What they agree on is the direction: fashion, in a month when food store sales also fell, was the weakest link.
Why a mild month hurts a clothing shop
A fashion retailer is unusual among shopkeepers in that it sells the weather as much as the product. A winter coat bought in September is a purchase brought forward by cold, and if the cold is late the sale does not vanish so much as slide into a discounting period. Retailers then have to decide whether to mark prices down early, hold their nerve, or hope for a frost. None of those options flatter a margin.
It is a reminder, too, of how much of the trade runs on conditions no one controls. Walk along any big shopping street in a warm September and you will find the window displays preparing for a season the customers have not yet felt. The shops are early; the climate is late; the gap is where the profit goes.
Nerves behind the weather
It would be convenient to blame the thermometer alone, but the economists quoted in the coverage see more going on. Matt Swannell, chief economic adviser to the Item Club, said that over the last three months non-food store volumes were flat, with some firms reporting that customers are cutting back, and he saw tentative signs of consumers under pressure. Oliver Vernon-Harcourt of Deloitte told Retail Times that shoppers are tightening their spending as they weigh rising inflation, fuel and energy prices and falling confidence. Petrol spending was more than 30 percent higher than a year earlier, according to PwC’s reading of the data, so a good deal of spending was evidently heading to the pump rather than the wardrobe, although the data cannot say whose.
That is a fair account of both sides of the argument. Retailers say the weather and cautious customers hurt them; economists say the underlying consumer is wary and the weather made it worse. Both can be true at once, as they often are in the weeks before Christmas.
The knife-edge quarter
The timing is awkward. The figures arrived just ahead of the Chancellor’s Budget, and Windsor told the Press Association that the peak trading season “remains on a knife edge,” with retailers hoping the announcements will not raise costs or dent sentiment. McKinsey’s Hai-Ly Nguyen put it more bluntly to Retail Times: September’s decline “adds pressure before the golden quarter,” the run-up to Christmas that fashion businesses watch most closely.
The next set of official figures is due on 20 November, according to the ONS, which will show whether October brought any recovery. Until then, retailers face the familiar choice of when to start the sales. Black Friday sits ahead like a cliff edge that everyone has agreed to run toward.
For readers who want a laugh with their weather
I write for The London Prat, whose comedy takes on British weather are, mercifully, not subject to seasonal adjustment. If you prefer your forecasts funny, try the London Prat’s comedy archive, browse British humor news, or cross the Atlantic to Bohiney Magazine. You can also find more of my London fashion reporting at The London Prat, and a guide to Britain’s answer to the Onion if you are new to the genre.
The lesson of September is a modest one. Fashion planned for autumn, autumn showed up late, and the customer, already counting pennies, decided there was no hurry. Whether that patience turns into Christmas spending or a January of bargains is now the only question on the rail.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/