But it seems that even those that spent heavily towards the end of the festive period, weren’t enough to rescue a season that was abysmal by the standards of most years in the past few decades.The latest High Street Sales Tracker (HSST) from accountancy and business advisory firm BDO showed that Christmas trading was the worst on record as far as December like-for-like sales were concerned with a 1.9% year-on-year drop coming hot on the heels of a 2.9% fall in November. คำพูดจาก เกมส์สล็อตได้เงินจริง

It was the 11th consecutive month of falling in-store sales and also came after the previous December had seen a 2.3% drop. In fact, 2018 was the sixth successive December dip and if you add all those apparently small percentages together, you actually get a worryingly chunky overall fall.Fashion was one of the categories that suffered with a 2% December drop that added further pain after a 3.8% fall in the previous December and five consecutive monthly drops during last year.Lifestyle retailers also ended a dismal year with sales plunging by 3.9% in December, and dropping as far as 9.95% in the second week of the month. While heavy discounting produced a bounce of 17.47% in the week of Christmas, the month-wide results still marked the worst December for in-store lifestyle sales for a decade.There was some good news, however. Homewares sales were the “lone bright star on the high street” and grew by 9.3% in December as Christmas-linked spending boosted the sector, with a strong boost in the final week of the month, posting growth of 24.04% “as retailers slashed prices.”And ‘non-store’ (ie online) sales grew 11.9% during the month, with strong results at the beginning of the period and in the final week before Christmas. That was presumably a hangover from November’s Black Friday when discounts were still the focus and also a consequence of consumers opting to do their last-minute Christmas purchasing online.BDO also said that the weekly like-for-like sales growth in the final week of the month “reinforced reports of a last-minute buying spree as Christmas and Boxing Day discounts got under way.”It’s just a shame the surge didn’t happen sooner. The last full week before Christmas, which included Frenzied Friday and Super Saturday (December 21 and 22), saw a “significant decline” of 4.86%, but from a good base of a 5.31% rise last year so at least those year-earlier gains weren’t wiped out completely. After that, the final week of the month which included the true start of the clearance season, “saw discounting provide a significant boost to in-store sales, increasing by 7.02%, but from a negative base of -3.84% for the same week last year.”Sophie Michael, Head of Retail and Wholesale at BDO LLP, said: “As retailers suffered the worst year for a well over a decade for in-store sales, it’s clear that consumer confidence is low. Shoppers have exercised extreme caution or shopped strategically online, seeking out discounts rather than visiting bricks and mortar stores or making impulse purchasesคำพูดจาก เว็บสล็อตใหม่ล่. The shopping spree retailers were hoping for in December didn’t happen, with only heavy discounting convincing consumers to part with their pounds.“There is a huge amount of nervousness in the market and consumer confidence – a key driver of spend – is brittle. Having suffered the sixth successive December of negative in-store sales growth, the UK high street is starting the year on shaky ground. Unfortunately, 2019 is set to be another challenging year for retail.”