Luxury Retail Upbeat; London Sales Surge in July

April 6, 2018

According to research from Walpole, which represents the British luxury industry, luxury retailers are upbeat despite the worry of looming austerity. In the first U.K. luxury benchmark, Walpole and Ledbury Research have found that half of all respondents expected to see a decline in their 2009 sales, but that 38 percent saw actual volume increases. This year, nearly 90 percent of research participants are expecting sales to rise, and one-in-three is forecasting growth of 10 percent or more.

The study found that more than a quarter of the British luxury industry is generating more than a quarter of its sales from visitors to the U.K., encouraged to spend by the weak pound. It was revealed that Americans still make up the most important single nationality. Central London retailers have delivered their strongest sales in June since the autumn of 2006, with sales up 14.4 percent, according to the British Retail Consortium-KPMG monthly survey. However, growth in the rest of the U.K. failed to perform so well with sales rising 1.2 percent.

"These

are impressive results—the strongest London sales growth since October 2006," says Stephen Robertson, the director general of the British Retail Consortium. "The heat and the sports events meant fewer people were out shopping in central London, but they were spending more per visit. Customers in the capital are less pessimistic than in the rest of the U.K. and significantly less so than this time last year. The weak pound is still attracting tourists. Clearance sales were another major factor."

Christine Cross, the chief retail adviser to PricewaterhouseCoopers, says: "We've seen less extensive discounting in the capital this summer—a fall of 20 percent compared with this time last year—due to healthy footfall and less sale stock resulting from retailers' better merchandise planning."

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