Up to 73 shopping days less
The corona crisis divided the Austrian retail sector in two last year. While lockdown, home office and closed restaurants resulted in people shopping significantly more in the supermarket or ordering online, the measures in other retail sectors had exactly the opposite effect. Clothes or shoes remained on the shelves like lead.
While the grocery trade achieved real sales growth of 7 percent in the past year, sales in the retail sector apart from basic supplies fell by an average of 3.9 percent. The clothing and shoe trade was particularly hard hit, with real sales declines averaging more than a fifth (22.4 percent), according to preliminary data from Statistics Austria.
In addition to the grocery trade, the winners also included mail order and internet retailing with real sales growth of almost 17 percent. Furniture, do-it-yourself supplies and electrical goods were also in great demand in 2020 as a whole, with the result that the stores achieved an average (real) turnover of around 4 percent more. In pharmacies and cosmetics retailers, sales fell slightly by 1.8 percent during this period. Sporting goods retailers or book stores, which the statistics summarize in “other retail trade”, also had to accept real sales declines of 4.8 percent.
