Men's fashion is increasing and women's is decreasing but on the whole, the first two weeks are in line with corresponding weeks in October. This is shown in the Purply Retail index for week 45, which now also contains sales from e-commerce.
Sales during the first two weeks of November are in line with the first two weeks of October, according to the Purply Retail index. Men's fashion has increased by 11,6 percemt compared to the corresponding weeks in October. Women's fashion on the other hand has decreased with 18 percent. The contribution margin is situated at 52 percent, which is the same as last month.
Diminishing sales of outerwear
When we look closer at what categories that customers are buying, we can see that the market has changed during the month. Of note is that sales of outerwear has decreased from October to November by 20 percent. However, other areas of the market have grown by 7,2 percent, which in turn makes up for the downturn of outerwear.
We now report digital channels
One bit of news with the latest update is that the Purply Retail index now contains numbers from the digital channels for stores with their own e-commerce outlet, Zalando, and Miinto. In other words, the index now contain digital channels which belong to store-chains, but we have no pure e-commerce contributors. The digital channels represented 8,5 percent of sales in the first weeks of November. Although, sales did decrease compared to October, with a downturn of 15%. If we look a bit more closely, the share of total sales for digital channels was equal between women's and men's fashion. The contribution margin however, was much more pronounced for women, with 55 percent compared to 51 percent for the men.
Focus on Black Friday
The coming weeks we will focus on the effect of Black Friday and all the activity surrounding it. In a recent report, Svensk Handel suggests lower revenue during Black Friday this year. However, the event will still bring about a meaningful amount of sales as 53 percent of those asked still reported said that they would still go out shopping, with clothes being one of the main areas of interest. The report from Svensk Handel also showed that 40 percent of all shopping during the sales period will occur online.
Important follow-ups
At Purply Retail we now have a couple of highly interesting weeks ahead of us, where we will be able to follow up on whether the share of shopping occurring via digital channels will increase and if so, by how much. We will also follow up on how the contribution margin develops, both in terms of numbers and percentages. Of course, we will also be able to show which categories and brand that have been the winners during the period. Please stick around the coming weeks to learn more!
The team at Purply Retail