Black Friday provides no UK store sales or footfall boost but e-tail soars - BDO

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Nov 29, 2018

Black Friday didn’t provide a boost for the UK high street and that could mean more retailer failures in 2019, advisory firm BDO said this week.

Its High Street Sales Tracker (HSST) reported like-for-like sales at physical stores up a tiny 0.5% during Black Friday and year-on-year footfall fell as much as 6.5% for the week as a whole. That was the biggest drop in three years.

The fall came as online retailers saw comparable sales growth of 30.8% for their best week so far this year and the best Black Friday week since 2014.

Sophie Michael, head of retail at BDO, said: "Retailers will be hugely disappointed with the flat in-store sales last week. Many have been manacled by a dire high street performance this year and forced to take part in Black Friday even at the cost of margin. Last year, high street retailers suffered their fifth successive December of negative sales growth. They will be desperately hoping next month won't mark the sixth, but this Black Friday performance won't be giving them much hope.”

But she added that they can’t escape the grip of Black Friday and “like it or loathe it, this American import is now firmly part of the UK's shopping calendar and it takes a bold retailer to withhold discounting.

“The weeks leading up to Christmas are no longer the golden trading period but a discounting frenzy fuelled by attempts to entice shoppers into stores and rescue poor sales performance for the year to date.”

But she said this means that many retailers will be in a precarious position. Getting no Christmas profits boost could undermine their survival prospects.