ReThink Productivity Podcast
In this exciting podcast, Simon Hedaux from ReThink Productivity shares his insights and strategies for improving productivity and efficiency in the retail and hospitality industries. With the help of clients, partners, and the ReThink team, Simon covers everything from measuring and tracking productivity to developing and implementing effective strategies.
Whether you're a business owner, manager, or employee, this podcast is a must-listen for anyone who wants to learn how to get more done and improve their bottom line.
Here's what you can expect to learn:
- How to measure and track productivity
- Proven strategies for improving efficiency and reducing waste
- How to create a culture of productivity and innovation
- Tips for motivating and engaging your team
- Real-world examples of how other businesses have used ReThink Productivity to achieve success
Don't miss out on this opportunity to learn from the experts and get ahead of the curve with your own business.
ReThink Productivity Podcast
Footfall Insights September 2024
Diane Wehrle CEO at Rendle Intelligence and Insights joins Simon for their monthly chat about footfall trends and shopping behaviours. They cover:
- Footfall trends from July to August 2024
- Outlook for the next few months
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Welcome to the Productivity Podcast. So fresh from the Rethink Forum, diane Will returns to join us to talk about July and August shopping trends and habits. Hi Di.
Speaker 2:Hi Simon.
Speaker 1:Thanks for the forum, a great presentation again, really great feedback from those that came in terms of your insights and predictions that we won't hold you to.
Speaker 2:Please don't. But I did get August right, so it's a good start, but I may be making a rod for my own back.
Speaker 1:Well, we'll see. We'll see Fingers crossed. So we're picking up July to August. I think June to July wasn't brilliant, was it? I mean, the weather was pretty horrific as well, and all the other things that were happening. So how, how are we looking across july to august?
Speaker 2:yeah, so in august it's been much more positive in both terms of footfall and sales, and also consumer confidence, actually, although it hasn't changed, but there has been some subtle shifts that are good, um. So let's talk footfall first, and this is footfall interstores from sensomatic. And in August footfall was just 0.4% down on August last year and actually that's the best result that we've seen since I've had data from January 2023. And much better than July, when it was 3.3% down. So that is really encouraging is really encouraging. Um, retail parks had a really fabulous time. Footfall was actually up 2.6 percent year on year.
Speaker 2:Um, high streets and shopping centers footfall down, particularly shopping centers, um, and that's probably because we have better weather in august, and who wants to go inside a shopping center when it's lovely weather? They were 1.8 percent down on last year and high streets 0.3, so, and high streets always do better in the summer. So, um, that's footfall, so that's a good start. And then sales, as measured by beauclair and this is sales in towns and cities across the uk um, a much better picture from july. July sales were down 9.3, which was pretty atrocious, and you you know, as you said, the weather was horrible, cool and rainy. Not a good July at all. August better still down, but 3.1% down, so it's improved by two thirds. Transactions and customers were down about 3%. So there's still fewer people buying, but the average transaction value was only down by half a percent. So those who are buying are spending more, but we're not. We're still seeing fewer customers buying products. Um, so that's still challenging for all retail across the board.
Speaker 1:Um, and then that's something we talked about last week, wasn't it the?
Speaker 1:in terms of yeah, one of your priorities in terms of any business at the moment probably needs to be maximizing and driving atv rather than thinking about how you win new customers. Clearly, they're both important, but this conversation we've been having throughout the last 12 18 months has always been around maximizing those people that are coming in because footfall has has been down, hasn't it in in most of the the sectors we talk about and look at? So it it really plays into that. If you can sell more to the the same people, that's got to be where your growth is absolutely, and, of course, it's the easiest way to get growth.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, footfall is on a long-term decline anyway, it has been for for a decade or more um, because we don't need to go to as many stores to shop as we did, and you know it's a message that people have listened to me time and time again, have heard. But you know we do a lot of our browsing online and I talked about that at the forum, how you know that split. But I also talked about the fact that, if you can get them into store, the majority of those who do come in store will buy in a store rather than going home to buy online. And, as you say, getting your existing customers to spend more or buy more when they're there has got to be the easiest way, so that and that's showing through in the data those who are buying are spending more money and it's that pocket of consumers who have more disposable income are spending their money. Um, you know there are a lot of people out there benefiting from higher interest rates through savings, um, and actually the savings ratio at the moment is about 11. So you know we are squirreling our money away, um, trying to probably to replenish those, those, those savings that we spent when inflation was at 11. So, um, you know there are people with some cash out there who are benefiting from higher interest rates and so it's trying to appeal to those guys really.
Speaker 2:And then consumer confidence actually is unchanged from July. It's still negative, minus 13, but People are a bit more optimistic about how they see their own personal finances over the next year and that's the confidence there has doubled, which is good. That's good. Yeah, that is good, although they're not quite as optimistic about the general economic situation in the UK. That's dropped. So people are feeling less confident about what's going to happen over the next year. Generally, and you know, inflation has not gone down. It still sits at 2.2, slightly above the government's target of 2%. Going to happen over the next year. Generally, and I you know, inflation has not gone down. It still sits at 2.2, slightly above the government's target of two percent, and consequently interest rates won't come down in the short term and we've got a lot of people on fixed interest mortgages who are likely they're likely to expire and need to renegotiate. So that's going to be a bit painful for quite a number of households and that's quite a big number of people, isn't?
Speaker 1:it is it? Is there a spike towards the end of this year and then a spike early 2025?
Speaker 2:yes, um, it tends to hit, um, you know, at times of the year. So they're saying that there are 1.6 million households this year and another 1.62 million households next year that are going to, you know, undergo this process and that could be, you know, an additional three or four hundred pounds a month in mortgage payments for households, which you know is it's a holiday, you know it's a disposable income, so that's that's.
Speaker 1:That could be a massive hit not particularly merry christmas then for some people, or a post post christmas um challenge yeah, I mean it's interesting with christmas, isn't it?
Speaker 2:because we had such a torrid christmas last year when interest rates had gone up and inflation was high and people were really feeling the pinch. Um, I'm forecasting, actually, that christmas will be better this year, purely because we're coming from a negative position on on sales last year. So we're going to have a little bit of a bounce back. It's not going to be enormous, but it will be better. People are saving. Uh, they have had um wage rises that are in excess of inflation, so people feel a bit more affluent. House prices are going up by about four percent, so that people always feel better when their houses are worth more money. Um, so that is encouraging people to spend and there's a bit more stability. I think people feel that there is around in the economy, although the news today about um gdp being at a hundred percent of our debt, being 100 of our gdp, isn't great news because it means that it takes being the meaning of highly geared into a whole new level.
Speaker 1:Um, so that's not going to be fantastic for the economy but, um, at a personal level, I think people are feeling a little bit more stable than they were and in terms of those categories which win and lose, I know we've talked historically about fashion being really really tough and trading down and and really showing those signs of particular growth. Health and beauty was was tracking really well, and even that started to kind of plateau now, hasn't it?
Speaker 2:Yes, I mean, fashion's had a pretty torrid time over the last year and, interestingly, july fashion sales were 12% below July's 2023. But the weather in July this year was horrible. I mean, I certainly didn't buy any fashion for summer and I'm sure a lot of people felt the same. There just really wasn't an opportunity to wear it. Um, but interestingly, in August, when we had some better weather, fashion sales are only 1.4 percent below August last year. So it's really you can see how responsive it is, and it won't be the only reason, of course, but, um, going from minus 12 to minus 1.4 is a big leap upwards.
Speaker 2:On the converse side of that, health and beauty was, um, you know it was. It hasn't improved. It was 4.8 percent down in july, better than fashion, but this time it's worse than fashion because it's still four percent down. Um, but the atv, the, the average transaction value in health and beauty, is increasing. People are those who are buying health and beauty again spending more money. So, um, yeah, health and beauty is a bit of a store and it largely. There's a greater proportion of those people who buy health and beauty buy in store rather than online.
Speaker 1:So, um, that's a bit of a stronger sector, for the stores as well yeah, and it's like that type of kind of considered assisted purchase, isn't it that you want? You want to chat to somebody? Potentially a luxurious item for what people are spending, and and my assumption, again back to my boots days, is that that will pick up as we enter um black friday week, cyber monday week, clearly christmas, that whole fragrance category and all the surrounding gift sets around it will give I'll give that a big push absolutely.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've said I've been doing some analysis of that, the transition from offline online to offline over that christmas period and there is a massive shift, um, to offline to stores in december and that you know it's not necessarily, it's always because they don't trust the post, but that's the whole of December. You know you can certainly order at the beginning of December and be guaranteed to get it in time for Christmas, but I think people like to shop in a store pre-Christmas because you get some of that flavour of Christmas and you know the essence of Christmas which you just don't get offline.
Speaker 1:It's a little yeah, and we're kind of coming into this the golden quarter for lots of organisations, probably everybody hospitality, certainly the high street, everybody outside of, maybe DIY and kind of home improvement. It's their peak period. Month now of offers and cyber. What was cyber monday? Again, there seems to be a blur between the physical and the um and the online channels and that then really bleeds into christmas. And I think certainly last year, the year before, sales were starting early december where people had seen that they probably weren't going to hit the target. Stock holding was high, um, they needed to actually just get some money through to just generate some throughput. So similar themes this year, do you think?
Speaker 2:I do. Um, you know, black friday people say, oh, will it still? Will this continue? I mean, we've had it for over 10 years now as a, you know, full-blown event, so it's not going anywhere. So I think we need to get beyond that. You know, is it a it a thing still?
Speaker 2:Because it's a thing and it certainly marks the start of the Christmas trading period and people, shoppers, see it as such. You know, it's the first time they'll have probably made a reason to go out shopping. They have justification for going. All the Christmas decorations are up in high streets and shopping centres, you know, and it's a bit of a day and it's close enough to December to feel Christmassy. So it really does mark the beginning of the Christmas training season and spend and sales demonstrate that. There's a big uplift in spend on that Black Friday week, of course, and then it dips a little after and then starts to rise in December. But you don't get much before Black Friday at all. The only possible increase we get really is around the October back holiday when kids are off and you know parents want to entertain children, um, but then it dips away again straight after that until Black Friday yeah, there's a bit of Halloween in the shops, as we as we speak, but not anywhere near as much as the last couple of years when people have gone in.
Speaker 1:We've taken that kind of American approach and it's become a big event. I think this year I've seen a lot less. It's still early, still time to go, but it's filling that gap between summer and Christmas. But as I say that there's mince pies out, christmas puddings out, I won't say they've gone early, but uh, apparently there's good sales on them.
Speaker 2:so there you go oh no, I'm not starting yet. Otherwise it's not good to start on the mince pies too early. Be bored for christmas agreed, brilliant.
Speaker 1:So we'll pause there. We'll be back next month with august to september, and then we'll roll into the the kind of um interesting periods of the year where we start to see that influence on seasonality, Christmas and all the things we've talked about. So thanks again, Di. Always great to catch up and thanks for your brilliant session last week at the Forum.
Speaker 2:No, my pleasure. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:Good, we'll catch you soon.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Simon.
Speaker 1:Bye mate.
