Following a very slow start to the year, the UK’s string of winter storms failed to stimulate online demand in February, as e-commerce sales for the month only grew by 0.4 per cent year-on-year.

This was according to the latest IMRG Capgemini Online Retail Index, which tracks the online sales performance of over 200 retailers. Continuing January’s equally weak performance, last month’s result fell below the three, six and 12-month rolling averages of four per cent, 7.5 per cent and 5.3 per cent growth.

Breaking down the results further, the picture was particularly bleak for multi-channel retailers, whose sales growth was down 8.2 per cent versus their online only counterparts (up 12.5 per cent). These polarised figures point to an emerging trend in the diverging fortunes of the two different retailer types, which could now be hugely exacerbated by the Coronavirus crisis.

Delving into the categories, the wet weather took its toll on gardening sales, which were down 22 per cent from last year’s unexpectedly warm February. Meanwhile footwear was the second lowest performing category, with sales of -7.6 per cent.

On the slightly brighter side, clothing continued to be one of the best performers of the year to date, though its February growth of 13.9 per cent was less impressive when viewed against very weak growth last year (up only 0.9 per cent). Despite only achieving flat growth of 0.7 per cent, electricals sales also represented a significant improvement on recent trends, with this month’s figure well above the -14 per cent recorded last February.

Andy Mulcahy, strategy and insight director at IMRG, commented: “Over the past few years, retail has become an industry beset with problems – even before the Coronavirus crisis hit the UK, which has massively shifted shopper behaviour.

“We were already seeing a division opening up between the growth fortunes of multichannel and online-only retailers, and this might be a trend that becomes increasingly profound given the current climate.

Mulcahy continued: “Now that stockpiling has driven demand to unprecedented levels, we may see a situation where shopper behaviour shifts over to that as a preferred channel very rapidly.”

Lucy Gibbs, managing consultant for retail insight at Capgemini, added: “Although the UK’s online market is well established, we can already see supermarkets struggling to satisfy peaks in demand – the months ahead could prove an opportunity for online to help serve customer needs, and potentially part of a larger shift to digital.”

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