While the summer sales were extended by a week last year, the summer period was significantly less lucrative for the sector’s brands, which recorded a significant drop in sales.
The summer of 2024 will not have been as bright as the previous one for the clothing sector. As expected during the summer sales which did not result in a significant surge in customers, the months of July and August were the occasion for a clear decline in activity. According to the Alliance du Commerce report, in-store turnover fell by half a point in July and then by 0.3% in August with disparities from one month to the next depending on the location of the brands. Since the beginning of the year, the drop in in-store sales has reached 2.5% compared to the same period in 2023.
In July, it was street and city centre shops that suffered the most with a 2.5% drop in their activity compared to the same period in 2023, while the decline was more contained for shopping centres on the outskirts (-0.2%). These poor results are notably attributable to the duration of the sales, which ended on 22 July this year, whereas they had been extended by one week in 2023 to end only on 1 August. Shopping centres located in city centres saw their activity increase by 1.3%, but the best performance went to shops located in commercial activity zones or retail parks with +1.9%.
Even sharper declines in online sales
In August, the decline in activity in street and city centre shops decreased to -1.3% but shops located in commercial activity zones or retail parks went into the red (-1.6%). At the same time, shops in shopping centres on the outskirts rebounded to +3% while those in shopping centres in city centres saw their activity increase slow slightly to +1.1%.
“While the Games period has given the French renewed enthusiasm, we hope that this national momentum will have an impact on the economy, and in particular the fashion retail sector,” stressed the general director of the Alliance du Commerce Yohann Petiot to LSA.
Overall, clothing brands fared better last month than in July thanks to the third week of August marked by the payment of the back-to-school allowance. In this regard, the figures for the change in footfall are clear: -4.7% in July 2024 compared to July 2023 then +1.4% in August 2024 compared to August 2023. Online, the situation is very different because the drop in sales was “only” 5% in July but it widened to -13.3% in August, so that the drop in sales over the whole year is twice as strong online (-5.3%) as in stores.
