Retail growth continues

Posted August 06, 2012 | By Dean Millard • Staff Journalist

For the second consecutive month there has been a growth in footwear and accessories sales, but the ARA says it is still too early to call it a trend.

Australian jewellery retailers will be hoping figures recently released from the Australian Bureau of Statistics indicate a changing of consumer psychology, with sales in clothing, footwear and personal accessories category continuing to show growth.

Sales figures have been slowly on the rise in the latter category since July last year, with the June figures showing a growth of 0.5 per cent for the second consecutive month. More encouraging for the jewellery industry is that it is the footwear and personal accessories subgroup that is leading this growth, up 1.1 per cent in June.

Australian Retail Association executive director Russell Zimmerman said while there was no data at this stage to confirm it, he believes much of the growth is related to the $2.85 billion of government handouts distributed in May and June in relation to the carbon tax.

He said while he hoped the past two months of growth were the start of an improving trend in the retail sector, his suspicion was it would balance out again in the coming months.

“There has been a bit of stimulus money for carbon tax and that may have been spent in that area,” Zimmerman said. “As a consequence I think this recent growth may be short lived, I hope I am wrong, but I think when we see the July and August figures we will know better if it is an ongoing trend or just a spike.”

Zimmerman said the interesting thing from the recent data to emerge was the fact that there did not seem to be any sort of consistent trend across any section of the retail industry for why there was growth, with some retailers operating in very similar markets experiencing very different results.

“I have noticed some other people saying the tide is turning, but I want to understand what is happening better before I make any calls like that. It is hit and miss across a number of fields. It is across the board, it is not the top end of the market doing well or vice versa. Some are doing OK and some are doing lousy and some are exiting from premises. The question is why you can get two retailers in the same market having very different responses.”

There was no data included in the findings for the specific breakdown of the jewellery industry on its own, however the indications were that on average the sector had experienced some growth.

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