Wednesday, December 1st, 2021
Delivery bottlenecks, Corona, 2G
Retail fears about the Christmas business
The best time of the year is actually just beginning for the retail sector: many consumers have a lot of money at Christmas. But delivery bottlenecks slow down – and now dealers fear further problems due to possible nationwide restrictions for unvaccinated people.
The final quarter, which is usually strong in sales, began with losses for Germany’s retailers. In real terms (price-adjusted), retailers had less sales in October of the current year, both compared to the previous month (minus 0.3 percent) and compared to October 2020 (minus 2.9 percent). “One possible cause for this drop in sales could be the multiple reported delivery bottlenecks in the retail sector,” said the Federal Statistical Office on the occasion of the presentation of the figures.
Just at the peak of the Christmas business, which is important for retail, the delivery problems have worsened, as the Ifo Institute recently reported. 77.8 percent of retailers complained in November that not all goods ordered could be delivered. In October it was 60 percent. “Some places on the shelf will probably remain empty at Christmas,” commented the head of the Ifo surveys, Klaus Wohlrabe. The fourth corona wave also clouded the mood of consumers, as the consumer researchers from Nuremberg-based GfK found. The propensity to buy has fallen to a nine-month low.
Not good news for retailers, which typically generate the lion’s share of annual sales in November and December. At the beginning of November, the German Retail Association (HDE) forecast a two percent increase in sales for this year’s Christmas business compared to the previous year. This would put sales in November and December of this year at around 112 billion euros.
HDE criticizes 2G plans
According to figures from the Federal Statistical Office, in October there was a decline in the sector compared to the same month last year in nominal terms – by 0.4 percent. Only nominal sales compared to September 2021 were up slightly at 0.2 percent. All these figures are calendar and seasonally adjusted.
Looking at the year as a whole, the industry has recovered somewhat from the low of the previous year, which was particularly affected by restrictions in connection with the pandemic. From January through October, the sales of retailers in Germany – without calendar and seasonal adjustment – were both real (plus 0.7 percent) and nominally (plus 2.5 percent) above the level of the same period of the previous year, as the Wiesbaden statisticians have calculated .
Christmas business usually makes the cash registers ring properly in stores. The industry is therefore following the discussion with concern that, in the fight against Corona, access to shops – with the exception of those for daily needs – should only be allowed for vaccinated people and genesis (2G). “Introducing 2G nationwide and nationwide in the trade would be completely disproportionate and would also miss the target,” said the chief executive of the Handelsverband Deutschland (HDE), Stefan Genth, on Tuesday. The federal and state governments want to work out measures by Thursday in order to then come to joint decisions. A number of federal states have already put a 2G regulation into force in retail or have initiated it.