Retail Sales Improve in February

January’s cold snap seems to have boosted retails sales in February after shoppers moved to obtain the goods they were forced to postpone the previous month. This has come from the British Rail Consortium (BRC), as like for like sales have gone up 2.2% after a fall in January.

However, the figures are being treated with caution, as last February, trading figures were very poor following weather similar to what happened in January.  Food sales also grew at their slowest rate since 2007, leading to mixed feelings about the latest figures.

“Despite appearances, these results are not that strong," commented Stephen Robertson, director general of the BRC.

"The growth is compared with very weak figures a year ago when February saw the worst of last winter's weather and this February's performance was helped by sales postponed from January - particularly sales of non-food items such as homewares and fashion."

Confectionary and Jewellery had a very good month as sales improve during the lead up to Valentine’s Day, while the sales delays in January led to the best sales coming over the first week of February.

The poor food figures are thought to be due to the panic buying and stock piling in January as people sought to make sure they had plenty of food during the bad weather.

The end of the bad weather also saw online and telephone sales boom, as deliveries were allowed to begin again, they were up by 15.5% compared with February last year.

Posted at 09:53AM Mar 09, 2010 by Marc Stenton in The Economy  |  Comments[0]