A disappointing Christmas on the UK high street has been eclipsed by a better than expected January.
Like-for-like sales grew by 1.4 percent in January, driven by a strong performance in the first two weeks of the year when the post Christmas sales were at their height.
Fashion retailers saw the strongest performance recording a year-on-year rise of 1.9 percent followed by homeware and furniture retailers, according to BDO’s high street tracker.
Lifestyle retailers saw like-for-like sales rise by 0.3 percent while non-store sales jumped by 20.2 percent in the period, although this was a slowdown on the 37.8 percent rise recorded the previous year.
In past years the post Christmas period has seen a slew of high street chains announce profit warnings after a bad Christmas, putting thousands of jobs at risk. Although some firms, such as Next, issued dire figures, there has been no high street collapses this year, suggesting that a better January has saved the day.
The poor Christmas sales figures were blamed on the unseasonably warm temperatures that were seen in the run up to Christmas.
Rebecca joined the HRreview editorial team in January 2016. After graduating from the University of Sheffield Hallam in 2013 with a BA in English Literature, Rebecca has spent five years working in print and online journalism in Manchester and London. In the past she has been part of the editorial teams at Sleeper and Dezeen and has founded her own arts collective.
