Three weeks into January and the odd Valentine's Day gift, along with Easter eggs, adorn supermarket shelves. (More the latter than the former, mind you. Huh. I wasn't aware The Bunny was due before Cupid this year.) Ah, so it would seem it's business as usual.
November retail trade sales were released last week at a higher-than-expected 3.4%, pipping economists average forecast by 1.9%. Wholesale trade sales also
showed growth in November.
Not all was well in the retail industry last week, though, as Shoprite
lost almost 6% on its share price despite posting
positive growth. Clearly not positive enough.
Retail stocks remained under pressure and Mr Price
felt the heat later in the week after reporting a 10% increase in sales. Truworths and Foschini managed to dodge this negative trend and posted
higher share prices Friday after releasing their sales updates.
Speaking of trends, we're still in the midst on our 2013 predictions, so if you're still in the dark about what's hot, what's happening and what you should be doing this year, check out our trends
here.
Have a fabulous week!
Shan Radcliffe, Group Head - Retail
PS. Responses to this column welcomed in our online ed's column archive. Send all your retail news to retailnews@bizcommunity.com, exclusive opinion pieces to contributors-retail@bizcommunity.com and international news to internationalnews@bizcommunity.com; also take a look at our guide "How to contribute to Bizcommunity, from op-ed pieces to news". Don't forget to follow @Biz_Retail on Twitter and join us on Facebook!
