Soar in retail sales due to Royal Wedding
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) has reported sales in the retail industry have risen by a total of 4.7% in May 2018, when compared to the same month last year. This is promising news as for the past few months reports have suggested high street retail is slowly declining, due to more interest in their competition of online shopping.
May has been a busy month for the UK, we’ve had two bank holiday weekends, a Royal Wedding and the FA Cup Final. The nation's excitement has correlated directly with spending more to celebrate the special events of last month. The UK head of retail at KPMG, who helped publish the British Retail Consortium study states, “Two bank holiday weekends, a Royal Wedding and of course sunnier spells will have been the main drivers behind the apparent rebound, with both online and high street sales thankfully up overall.”
BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson also commented, “Better weather and the bank holiday effect led shoppers to buy from garden furniture and summer fashion ranges, recovering some of the ground lost in April. The FA Cup Final and the Royal Wedding may have got the nation in the mood for celebration but the day itself was a distraction for shoppers as they stayed at home to watch the festivities; sales also tailed off once the party was over.”
In even more good news, new car sales have risen for the second month in a row. They have had a 3.4% increase to 192,649 sales during May, this follows after a large decline of new car sales in 2017. Mike Hawes, the chief executive of SMMT responds to the promising news stating, “May’s growth, albeit on the back of large declines last year, is encouraging and suggests the market is now starting to return to a more natural running rate.”