Retail therapy: Some UK shoppers return as coronavirus curbs ease

The large number of British shoppers in early June indicates “a huge amount” of pent-up demand among consumers in physical stores as the coronavirus lockdown is eased, industry data showed on Monday.

The United Kingdom went into lockdown on March 23 to slow the spread of the pandemic, with all retail stores deemed non-essential forced to close.

Some household goods stores and garden centres reopened in mid-May. Outdoor markets and car showrooms were allowed to open from June 1. All other non-essential retailers are set to follow from June 15 if the government’s physical-distancing requirements are met.

“The limited evidence so far has suggested that, despite the growth in online shopping over the past two months, there is a huge amount of pent-up demand amongst consumers for bricks-and-mortar shopping,” said Diane Wehrle, director of market research firm Springboard.

She highlighted the “monumental queues” that built up at major home stores in the weekend before the official easing of lockdown restrictions in England on June 1.

Springboard found shopper numbers, or footfall, strengthened noticeably in retail parks over the first few days of the week following the relaxation, with the year-on-year decline averaging 42.9 percent versus 56.2 percent over the same days at the beginning of May.

For example, thousands of shoppers across England queued up for the reopening of IKEA stores on June 1.

But Springboard noted that while retail parks were seeing some recovery in footfall, this was not the case for high streets and shopping centres, where the year-on-year decline in footfall over the few days since June 1 was still more than 70 percent.

For the May 3 to May 30 period, overall footfall in the United Kingdom was down 73.3 percent, an improvement from a record drop of 80.1 percent in April, Springboard said.

An industry survey on Friday showed retail sales plunged by nearly a fifth in May.

But despite the glimmers of a rebound as the country slowly gets back on track, the mid-term financial health of the retail industry does not seem promising.

A little more than two months after the lockdown was imposed, the UK’s economy is in tatters. In response to forecasts predicting the worst recession in 300 years, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is drawing up options to bolster the economy after the government withdraws its vast package of financial support in the months ahead, according to news reports earlier this month. 

Sunak warned last month that the UK is facing a significant recession after a report showed the economy shrank by almost 6 percent in March. 

In a sign of the scale of the economic challenge, Sunak last month extended wage subsidies for furloughed workers until the end of October at a cost of billions of pounds to the public purse.

And a survey published last week showed the UK’s labour market for May was still in freefall, despite the rate of decline slowing slightly.