The shopping world has been remade by the coronavirus.
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The coronavirus recovery continued for apparel and accessories specialty stores in August, but department stores lost ground compared with earlier in the summer.
August sales at specialty stores rose a seasonally adjusted 2.9 percent compared with July while department stores slipped back 2.3 percent for the month, according to the Census Bureau’s monthly read of retail sales.
Total retail and food service sales rose 0.6 percent, a slightly weaker showing than the 0.7 percent economists had penciled in and a slowdown from the 0.9 percent pace of growth logged in July.
While the numbers represent vast improvement from the spring, when the coronavirus shut down non-essential retailers, sales are still far from pre-COVID-19 levels.
Fashion specialty store sales in August were down 20.4 percent from a year earlier while department stores were off 16.9 percent.
The figures report only sales in stores, with some of the loss from physical sales replaced with online, but momentum there is slowing too, although the sector’s year-to-year growth has remained explosive.
Sales at non-store retailers — mostly e-commerce — were flat in August after rising 0.3 percent in July. However, sales at non-store retailers were still up 22.4 percent from August 2019, which now seems like a distant memory.
The sales realities continue to reshape the industry. On Tuesday, Kohl’s Corp. said it was cutting 15 percent of its corporate workforce, realigning costs with the number of customers at the till.
Link nguồn : https://www.wwd.com/business-news/financial/august-retail-sales-coronavirus-covid-fashion-1234586647
