Retailers report subdued Christmas spend as footfall plummets

Footfall fell across all UK locations by an average of 4% from December 26 to January 1, according to the latest data from Springboard.

High street footfall was the worst hit, plunging 11.3% on Boxing Day, with a more modest decline of 3.6% on December 27.

Retail parks and shopping centres recorded 4.2% and 7.4% declines in footfall respectively on Boxing Day.

Some of London’s busiest streets even failed to attract more customers during the same week.

Shopper numbers across London’s West End, comprising Bond Street, Oxford Street and Regent Street, increased by a marginal 0.2% year on year in the week from December 26 to January 1, according to data from New West End Company.

Despite these figures, some retailers reported better-than-expected sales during the crucial Christmas trading period. However, sales were still lower when compared with previous years.

The Entertainer chief executive Gary Grant said: “December has not traded as badly as October and November and therefore it is better than we expected at the beginning of December, but nothing like as successful as we had planned as early as June.”

A source close to one grocery retailer said it had a “reasonably solid” Christmas trading period, though the “spike in spend came a lot later this year” with December 23 and 24 both “exceptionally busy days”.

Grant observed a similar pattern in customer spending on toys.

Grant said: “The Saturday before Christmas was outstanding. Christmas week – Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday – were absolutely outstanding and we’re actually trading really well this week too.

“From December 21 we absolutely traded our socks off and post-Christmas too.” Despite this, Grant added that Christmas trading “wasn’t better than the previous year.”

One department store source said store sales were “better than hoped” for and “held up” against the threat of online. 

One footwear boss concurred with this view.

“We were pleased with Christmas overall, and had more of a full-price Christmas, which is very nice,” he said.

“We had a good week up to Christmas, skewed to online. The week after Christmas was tough and this week has been quite strong so far, skewed towards stores.”

The footwear boss added that he expected that “for most people, [trading] was less bad than they’d feared”.

”I imagine sales will fall off of a cliff next week – January is always the hardest month. But, as a bundle, we are kind of pleased [with Christmas trading]”, he said, though he stressed that trading generally is more subdued than in previous years.

A source close to one grocer said: “The election and the certainty that brought definitely helped – you got the sense that people had the confidence to stock up a lot more and really treat themselves after that.”

But Jefferies analyst James Grzinic forecast falling sales for both Tesco and Morrisons during the Christmas period.

Grzinic predicted Tesco’s third-quarter and Christmas like for likes to be down 0.8% and 0.5% respectively. He also forecast that the northern focus of Morrisons’ store portfolio will mean it will have been harder hit by “pre-Christmas political uncertainty”, which was present “in the more Brexit-biased parts of the UK”. Because of this, he predicted that the grocer’s second-half trading to date will be down 1.8% in like-for-like terms.