Ragtrader has been given the heads up on how retailers have fared during the post-Christmas sales.
As many look forward to the official figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on how the apparel sector has performed, executive director of the Australian Retailers Association, Russell Zimmerman, has been in touch with traders to get the low-down in advance.
Zimmerman, who predicts that the total retail market across all sectors during the post Christmas shop will amount to $14.1billion worth of sales, of which $6.58billion will be of non-food sales, said the results have been 'patchy' but encouraging.
Zimmerman has been speaking to many retailers, who operate 40 or more stores, to build up a picture of how the industry has been performing in the key trading period.
Feedback has revealed that businesswear has been the best selling apparel range across the board with resortwear failing to pull in the customers.
“People have been buying business attire, particularly within the first few days of the sales,” Zimmerman said. “However, the area of concern is the resortwear, which as a result has had to be heavily discounted.”
In a bid to shift the unwanted resortwear Zimmerman said many retailers have been forced to add further percentage discounts on sale items as the goods are still not selling.
He said the excess stock of resortwear that many retailers have is down to the poor weather at the start of the summer.
Department stores David Jones and Myer opened their city stores at 5am on Boxing Day.
Despite the anticipated early morning sales rush on December 26, trade got off to a slow start in Sydney and Bondi department stores - but things swiftly picked up from about 8am.
Zimmerman said trade was also slow at the start of the post-Christmas sale period in Melbourne CBD due to the hail and overall poor weather, so most people headed to the 'wall to wall' bustling suburban shopping centres, such as Chadstone.
“Sales in the apparel sector is a mixed bag. Overall it's a patchy outlook as although most said they are going to make their budget, some said they may fall just below or even above,” Zimmerman said.
Zimmerman is sticking to his predictions of $6.58billion worth of non-food sales, up from $6.43billion last year, and the official ABS statistics should be out in March.
A spokesman from Westfield said its sales and traffic data over the festive period will not be revealed until its quarterly reporting.
“Anecdotal feedback from our centres is that Westfield across all states experienced strong traffic in the last two weeks of Christmas and beyond expectation traffic for the Boxing Day sales period,” a Westfield spokesman said.