24/07/2019
Online sales in the UK see the lowest year on year growth rate ever in May
Online sales across the globe have a tendency to fluctuate quite a lot, and this May has seen one of the most dramatic fluctuations ever, while still maintaining the tendency to grow.
Worst May growth ever
May of 2018 saw rather steady and even somewhat rapid growth across the board. This could be attributed to the heat wave that occurred, as well as the football World Cup that took place at that time. It seems that the shoppers were quite eager to spend more at that time. This year, there were no major events, and the weather was much more stable, so the retail in the clothing sector suffered heavily. Being one of the most important parts of online sales, the negative growth in this sector heavily influenced the overall figures.
It is symptomatic that the clothing and fashion sectors recorded negative growth in both male and female segments, and that the only part of the entire vertical that experienced mild growth was the footwear.
The overall drop of growth in May 2019 is the worst ever since the inception of online retailing as a major sector, around 20 years ago!
Health and beauty saves the day
The only steadily growing sector of online retailing is Health and Beauty niche. Despite the overall negative growth of other sectors, it has marked a significant growth of over 22% compared to the same month last year. The main sub-verticals that are currently booming are health and wellbeing products as well as the celebrity endorsed cosmetics. A huge jump in this vertical pretty much remedied a huge drop that has been suffered in the fashion and clothing niche, so the overall growth is still positive, although it stands at just 1.5%.
Mobile commerce, on the other hand, has continued to grow fast, and despite the fact that the entire market has stalled, it reached the growth rate of 8.4%.
These numbers could be somewhat alarming if the trend continues, but it is most likely that the stagnation is closely related to the vacation period and the summer that is much milder than the summer of 2018.