Black Friday Fails To Shine But Plenty of Hope Placed On The Final Weekend Before Christmas
The lead-up to Christmas includes some of the most important retail weekends in the entire calendar year. Black Friday and the final weekend before Christmas, known as ‘Panic Weekend’ are some of the most lucrative weekends in the industry. As a result, it is important for a fashion photography studio in London and others with a vested interest in fashion to reflect on the results and forecasts for these special dates.
Let’s start off by reflecting on the results from Black Friday 2022.
Black Friday fails to shine
According to figures released by The Office for National Statistics (ONS), despite October seeing a rise in retail sales by 0.9%, November dropped by 0.4%. This is lower than predicted and suggests that whilst clothing sales may have grown, the situation is still not looking good and Black Friday hasn’t had the kind of impact for all retailers that we hoped for. The picture looks particularly bad for online retailers, often a bastion against the negativity seen by high-street brands.
Where Black Friday did seem to help is in the longer discount period that stores are now offering, particularly those stores focusing on household goods, food and alcohol. Purely online retailers saw a sales volume decrease of 2.8% in November, suggesting shoppers are continuing to move back to the high street after significant disruption and a change of habits from Covid.
The fallout from these figures is that the Christmas period doesn’t look likely to provide a great deal of positivity for the retail and fashion sector. It is hoped that the last weekend before Christmas and the subsequent Boxing Day sales could help generate more sales from those price-sensitive shoppers.
Plenty of hope has been placed on Panic Weekend
The last weekend before Christmas is always one of the most important and for businesses including fashion photography studios, one of the most lucrative. It was expected that consumers would spend an impressive £1.63 billion on Saturday and £1.24 billion on Sunday of that weekend. This would represent a 4.4% increase when compared to the same last weekend before Christmas in 2021.
Surprisingly, this spending increase is forecasted as a result of people going into physical stores, as well as the standard online retail surge as this would be the last opportunity to shop and get items before Christmas.
Whilst we need to look at the results when they are published, experts have suggested that despite retail figures over the 6-week Christmas period likely to be down year-on-year any boost to sales will be a welcome sight for the retail sector.
Summary
We will review the results for December in the coming weeks and months, with many in the industry sharing their results. Experts and industry alike, including those fashion photography studios reading this will be keen to understand whether consumer confidence did rebound, are fashion and retail brands are positive about their business position and what the forecast is for 2023.
