It’s a Wrap! 2017 UK Christmas retailer results: Winners and Losers

The Christmas season is traditionally a time when retailers can look forward to improved sales and a festive boost to year end results. With consumer budgets stretched this year,GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, takes a look at the winners and losers in the battle to win consumer spend.

Christmas winners
Clothing & footwear online pureplays including boohoo.com and ASOS delivered a standout performance this Christmas as well as QUIZ which remains a small but fast-growing player in the clothing market.

Sarah Johns,Retail Analyst at GlobalData commented, ''With a clear understanding of their target customers and ability to capitalise on demand for stylish, trend-led products and demand for convenient delivery options, it is unsurprising that these retailers performed so well.''

Consumer budgets remained under pressure in the run-up to Christmas, especially due to high inflation in food in the latter half of 2017. With discount players such as Aldi and Lidl offering appealing premium ranges and offering good value for money, many shoppers decided to trade down from premium players such as Waitrose and Marks & Spencer, leading to stellar trading at the German discounters.

Christmas losers
Department stores generally underperformed, with traditional midmarket players House of Fraser and Marks & Spencer reporting particularly disappointing results and Debenhams doing little better having somewhat failed to excite consumers and differentiate itself.

Johns continued, ''What is certain is that investing in multichannel is vital to long-term survival as shopper reluctance to visit department stores takes its toll and shoppers increasingly turn to buying online.''

A 7.2% and 6.9 drop in like-for-like and online sales at Mothercare made it one of the worst performing players in retail this Christmas.

Johns added, ''While Mothercare was not alone in reporting negative online sales (House of Fraser's was down 7.5%), it is disappointing that e-commerce sales fell so sharply when growth in online retail spending grew 7.6% in 2017 and so many other retailers reported double-digit growth in this channel.''

Home retailer Carpetright suffered a 40% fall in its share price after announcing a profit warning along with a 3.6% decline in UK like-for-like sales. However, the difficulties faced by the specialist were not confined to the floorcoverings market - home retailers Multiyork and Feather & Black fell into administration in late November as limited consumer confidence inhibited big-ticket spending.