RETAILERS who two weeks ago were complaining that the weather was not warm enough now say that in some parts of the country it has been too hot.
Early this month, shoppers were holding back from buying summer fashions because it was too cold and wet. However, the past week has seen many shunning the stores because of the heat.
However, the picture has been very mixed — with thunderstorms over large parts of the country yesterday adding to yawning regional variations in demand.
While sales of furniture, brown goods and white goods and staple clothing have been in the doldrums, the sunshine has triggered a sharp burst of spending on women’s fashion and barbecue food and drink.
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One large fashion retailer, which declined to be named, reported that sales in the past week in some of its stores were up by as much as 50 per cent on a year ago.
However, John Lewis, one of the few retailers to publish up-to-date sales figures, suffered a 28 per cent slump in sales last Saturday, compared with a year ago.
Temperatures on Saturday reached 30C (85F) in some parts of Britain, sending people flocking to parks, beaches and back gardens — anywhere but to the shops. “People preferred to do something other than shop,” John Lewis’s PR manager, Helen Megaw, said. “It was the first really hot weekend of the summer.”
High temperatures since then have kept shoppers away, at least in the hottest parts of the country. Andrea Cockram, an analyst for Verdict Research, said: “It’s been too hot to shop. What retailers like is an average British summer day — about 23 degrees, sunny but with a breeze. Either extreme is good for a few product categories, but is not good for retail overall.”
The first day of a heatwave can be lucrative as shoppers stock up, but thereafter the takings can be thin as they decamp to their gardens. That theory is borne out by figures from FootFall, which monitors customer visits to dozens of shopping centres and high streets. It found shopper numbers rose 5 per cent on Friday — the first day of the hot spell — but fell by 7.5 per cent on the Saturday and by a till-silencing 15 per cent on the Sunday.
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Only two weeks ago many retailers were complaining the weather was not warm enough. Fashion retailers in particular love an early heatwave, which persuades female shoppers that they will get enough wear out of a skimpy top or a bikini.
Clothing retailers have been suffering from flat demand. Sales growth in May — which was unseasonably chilly and wet — was its slowest for four years. This week Debenhams, Selfridges and House of Fraser all launched summer sales. “That’s early,” said one retail consultant. “Either they’ve bought too much stock or sales levels must be very low.”
Women’s wear sales at John Lewis last week were down 3.7 per cent compared with the same week a year ago.
Other merchandise also suffered. Sales of furniture and textiles were down by 6.8 per cent compared with the same week in 2004. Children’s items and toys were down 4 per cent.
However, there were big sellers, too. Air-conditioning units and fans were up by 63 per cent, freezers were up by 40 per cent and garden lighting sales were up by 56 per cent.