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High street toasts strong start to 2020 as sales jump to six-year high

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One in five high street workers are self-isolating due to government pandemic tracing rules, and the situation could worsen.

Retailers hailed the best in-store sales figures for six years last month, as the end of the Brexit deadlock sparked a surge in consumer confidence. 

Like-for-like sales at physical stores increased 5.7 per cent in January from a base of minus 0.2 in 2019, following the “worst year on record” for retailers.

Bricks and mortar sales were positive every week of January following months of decline, providing an increasingly rare piece of optimism for the UK high street. 

However, experts warned that the result could be a “false dawn for high street recovery” as discounting appeared to drive some of the shopping spree. 

The strong performance was consistent across lifestyle, fashion and homeware sectors for the first time in two years.

In-store homeware sales drove the positive result, soaring 8.9 per cent compared to last year – the best result in nine years.

The fashion sector – which has repeatedly been the worst affected by the high street’s decline – reported sales growth of 5.9 per cent after two consecutive months of negative results. 

Lifestyle sales jumped 5.1 per cent year-on-year, the strongest result since 2014. Online sales also soared, rising 18.8 per cent.

BDO head of retail and wholesale Sophie Michael said: “Despite January being the best month in six years, thi may be a false dawn in terms of a high street recovery. 

“Whilst like-for-like sales may be positive, other reports show that stock levels of retailers are high and buying orders have again fallen, which suggests that discounting is once again driving sales.

Delaying a return to full pricing will ultimately impact on already paper-thin margins. With returns also unaccounted for, the true picture of January has yet to emerge.

“Bargain-hungry shoppers are continuing to acclimatise to increasingly lengthy sales periods, which stores are responding to with discounting still visible on the high street. February will show whether consumer confidence has got a toehold in some kind of recovery for retail.”