Beauclair’s data for July 2022, which we have just released to our clients, shows that July was the strongest month for retail sales in city centres since the end of lockdown. This is based on data for our client cities and the cities they have chosen to monitor as their peers and competitors.
On average, city centre retail sales increased by 7% between June 2022 to July 2022. Compared to the same month in 2019 (the last full calendar year not affected by covid), July’s retail sales were the strongest since the end of lockdown at 8% above July 2019.
This was the not just the result of more customers. It was also a result of increased sales per customers. In previous months, Average Revenue Per Customer (ARPC) has been weak so that while customer numbers may have recovered to pre-pandemic levels, sales still lagged.
For example, in May and June 2022, despite customer numbers being +4-5% higher than the same months in 2019, lower ARPC meant that total sales were -1% below the Year-on-3-Year level.
This trend of weaker ARPC has been a common theme across many of the city centres that we track. Often this is a result of shifts in sales between retail sectors. Most significantly, we have generally very strong sales performances from Food & Drink, while General Retail (which includes department stores) has at best stagnated and has normally experienced significant declines.
Since Average Transaction Values (ATVs) are generally higher in General Retail than Food & Drink, the increases in Food & Drink sales have not usually been sufficient to offset the declines in General Retail sales.
However, in July 2022 customer numbers were up 9% on July 2019 and ARPC was just -1% down. This is much improved on the -5% ARPC average for the rest of 2022 compared to the same months in 2019.
On an aggregate level there is thus little evidence that city centres suffered in July 2022 from declining sales due to the cost-of-living crisis. This is not to say that city centres will be immune from the cost-of-living crisis, far from it. However, it does seem that, just as they recovered from the covid lockdowns more slowly than other shopping areas, the effects of the cost-of-living crisis might also take longer to play out in city centres.