MOSL: CONSUMER (GROUND REALITY)-Festive season brings no cheer

​CONSUMER (GROUND REALITY): Festive season brings no cheer

We visited some mall-based and standalone retail outlets in western India to understand the demand trend during the recently concluded festive season. Though the sample size was small (and thus, may not be reflective of nation-wide sentiment), we did not observe any signs of a strong festive season-led demand recovery.

• (i) GST-related price increases (in categories like apparel, accessories and-electronics), (ii) far lower cash in the system compared to previous year's festive season, (iii) continued competition from online retailing and new malls, (iv) heavy rainfall, and (v) travel inconvenience caused by infrastructure works, among other reasons, were blamed for the decline in footfall and moderate YoY sales growth during the festive season (beginning in Navratri and ending after Diwali). This is after adjusting for the fact that the festive season began 11 days earlier this year compared to last year.
• In apparel, unlike the last festive season, there was no distinct trend in favour of value retailing. Private label names like 'Westside' and 'Max' did not report uniformly better sales compared to players like 'Shoppers Stop' and 'Lifestyle' that have far lower proportion of private label sales.
• 'Jockey' was the exception among apparel or accessories, and performed very well.