Welcome to the Productivity Podcast. It's our monthly chat with Diane Wuerl, ceo of Rendell Intelligence and Insights. Hi, diane, welcome back.
Speaker 2:
Simon, great to be here again.
Speaker 1:
Good, good, and we're in well, this year's flying by. So this is we kind of. We have a month flag, don't we? So this is February to March, but Easter's in the mix.
Speaker 2:
It is for the first time in a number of years. It was an early Easter this year.
Speaker 1:
in the mix it is for the first time in a number of years it was an early easter this year and it was cold and wet and didn't feel like easter. So I'm all my hopes are pinned on the maybank holidays that there's actually a big yellow thing in the sky called the sun that gives us a bit of warmth yes, I mean the early easter.
Speaker 2:
You always run the risk of the weather not playing ball really, and it wasn't as bad as they forecast, to be honest, but it was pretty chilly, which was always means that people don't spend what they might have spent over easter on garden furniture and going to going to garden centers by plants, because just too early to plant them yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:
So I think the diy is the companies and the people that like it. That comes, that comes in the next round of bank holidays or all that kind of stuff. It was a bit bit early for them, but they'll be set up because easter through summer's their their christmas, in effect, having been there and done it in a previous life for a number of years. So talk us through what we've seen, february through march okay.
Speaker 2:
So I'll start with footfall, because obviously we need footfall to drive sales um, and footfall um interstores from Sensomatic was actually 1.3% down year on year in March.
Speaker 2:
So a small decrease and it's not a huge decrease and actually it's a decrease that we've probably come to expect. And it was sort of a pre-pandemic trend the small decrease year on year. And, of course, over the pandemic everything got moved around and we saw these huge peaks and troughs In February, actually so an improvement of February. In February footfall was 6.2% down on the previous year, so it's actually strengthening a little bit, which is great news. And in March it was shopping centres that kept level and retail parks and high streets saw these decreases in customer numbers, particularly retail parks, where the year on year decrease was three and a half percent. So that's reflecting this pull back on spending on large ticket items. People aren't, you know, they're finding that, they're just being a lot more cautious. So we start with footfall. So it's okay, not amazing, not terrible, but not fantastic either. And then we move on to sales and essentially we've got two sources. The main source that I've referred to is a source from Beauclair, who produced sales data based on debit card transactions in UK towns and cities. So this is physical store sales and debit card transactions account for about two thirds of all retail spending anyway. So it's a really good source of data and in March as a whole spending was 0.2 percent up on March last year, so a very marginal increase. But of course we've got Easter in the mix there, so we didn't have Easter in the mix last year in March, so very modest growth and we didn't have Easter in the mix last year in March, so very modest growth.
Speaker 2:
The sectors that did really well and have been doing really well are food and drinks, that's, hospitality, where sales went up by 8%. Entertainment, where sales went up by 2%. Fashion sales declined, but only by 1.4% and they declined by more in February. So people did, they recovered a bit of spending on fashion, but unfortunately household, which includes obviously those visits to retail parks and gardens and big ticket items, but small as well had a torrid time and sales dropped by 33% 34% on last year in March. So not good, not good at all. So March as a whole is sort of following the trend that we've seen in the previous months. The spend is focused on hospitality and entertainment. Self-care Grocery did well at 2.3% up, health and beauty was down and self-care has been strong in the previous two months, averaging about 4% year-on-year increase. But when we talk about Easter, it's a different story, and that'll be my next point, really.
Speaker 1:
Good. So grocery clearly everyone other shopped over Easter, I'm sure in at least one of the big four or six. Depending on how you categorize it now, they will have seen volume. But I'm assuming margin will have been hit slightly because everybody had half price leg of lamb, half price shoulder of pork, all that kind of Easter expectation of deals. Easter expectation of deals. Health and beauty is interesting and I know we'll come on to kind of that Easter weekend now. But clearly if you shopped any health and beauty over Easter you'll have seen significant discounts.
Speaker 2:
Yes, and really that's what influenced the shape of sales in March. So over the whole of March health and beauty declined sales in March. So over the whole of March health and beauty declined. But over Easter, the Easter weekend, health and beauty sales were 20% higher than Easter last year.
Speaker 1:
20% Wow.
Speaker 2:
So like for like, yeah, like for like. So we're looking at Easter this year Now. Easter last year was a week later, but it was still the Easter weekend. It's not a huge gap between the Easters, but we do compare Easter versus Easter, otherwise you get a very distorted view. So health and beauty 20% higher. So we've got this real push towards self-care Grocery over Easter. So Easter versus Easter 6% higher. So people were doing the dining in, you know, the Sunday lunch, which is what we forecast Food and drink. So hospitality, hospitality eight percent higher than east to last year. So clearly, people were either dining in or going out to eat and there was this. We we always knew that and that's what we were forecasting at rendall. That, um, it was very much about um, experience and entertainment. Entertainment was 10 up from east to last year. Interestingly though, fashion, which was down over the month by about 1.4%, was up at Easter. We hadn't anticipated that People were starting to buy fashion this Easter 6% up, which was really encouraging People getting ready for holidays abroad.
Speaker 2:
We've seen a lot of Easter holidays abroad, haven't we this year, A lot of people going for Easter holidays Buying?
Speaker 1:
buying a winter coat if you're staying in this country, snow boots and hats and umbrellas rain, rain, rain gear.
Speaker 1:
If you're unlucky to go camping, you know you might want to buy some wet weather gear so I suppose that plays then doesn't it into, yeah, people getting ready to go abroad or going abroad, that big kind of two-weekweek exodus. I know a lot of clients I spoke to, of ours, where they'd got the two weeks off with the kids. They were off somewhere a bit of a warmer climate and taking advantage, but also because Easter was early, it wasn't in this country. You didn't really, I suppose, with the weather, go to the coast or the beach or the day out, so you defaulted back to the coast or the beach or the day out, so you defaulted back to the takeaways or the grocery kind of sunday lunch stuff which plays into that market, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2:
And you know it has been exceptionally wet. So if you are going out for the day and you hadn't got any wet weather gear, you might have to buy some, because it's you know, you just couldn't take the chance, really, could you? So easter was actually very strong, um, but I, you know, I put some insights out for the month. The beauclair and I called it robin peter to pay paul. Really people held back very strongly for the beginning of the month and we're waiting for easter to come through at the end of the month and thought, well, if we're going to spend our money, we'll do it over easter weekend yeah, and and a bit like we're preconditioned to expect deals.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely.
Speaker 1:
Certainly in the grocers, certainly in the health and beauty sector fragrance, et cetera, skincare we're programmed to expect something at Easter. So maybe, like you say, people are cannibalizing their own sales to some degree or losing margin because they're holding off. So March to April then, which will be our next month's recording, yeah are we expecting to see footfall drop, because last year it had easter eastering?
Speaker 2:
yeah, absolutely. Unfortunately, you know, within early easter, when we look at april versus april last year, we're going to see some not I expect to see the figures not to be so strong, because clearly we're not going to have anything exceptionally exciting in Easter this year and in April this year, so we will probably expect a bigger decline in footfall. Sales won't be as strong either. People will have spent it all over Easter this year. So I think we have to brace ourselves for a bit of a rocky period in April.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and the weather again. You know we're almost at the end of April recording this. The weather's been non-existent, hasn't it?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, wet, wet grey We've had two days of Very cold, actually, over the last few days as well.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so maybe that stacks towards May, june and July being absolutely blistering. And and you know we'll see it all come back the feel good factor. Everyone spends a bit more and feels a bit better when there's a bit of sun on their skin. So fingers crossed. We know it's been a tricky trajectory, but it's good to hear that overall March was positive and certainly that Easter weekend people were out spending. So let's see what the thread brings us over the coming months.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, no, it was very encouraging, actually much better than I had anticipated.
Speaker 1:
Good, well, always a pleasure to speak. I will see you next week at the retail technology shows. If anybody else is coming, di will be wandering around and come and see us at our stand. Always good to catch up. And then I'll need to give my feet a rest for a couple of days after being on them for two absolutely no.
Speaker 2:
If anyone's at the rts show, be great to see you brilliant.
Speaker 1:
I look forward to seeing you next week and we'll catch up on the next episode too lovely thanks, iman cheers.