Online retail sales register the slowest growth on record

As the research shows, the month of May continued the 2019 trend of below-average sales growth, with +1.9% year-on-year (YoY). In 2018, there was registered the strongest May growth for online retail since 2010.

Other key findings:

• a number of categories struggled in May 2019, such as electricals (-27.5%) and gifts (-18.5%), while BWS recorded the first negative growth of 2019, reaching -19.7%;

• clothing has had a much slower growth rate vs 2018’s performance (+8.2%)

• menswear was down -13.3% against very strong results in 2018 (+23%) and Womenswear (-4.8%) continued the trend of single-digit or negative growth in 2019;

• accessories have seen successful growth in previous months but reported its worst performance in 10 years: down -20.0% YoY;

• footwear was the only clothing subsector to see positive growth (+6.7%);

• health and beauty sector continued its strong monthly performance with +22.6% compared to +2% total vs 2018;

• m-commerce is up by +8.4%, with smartphones reaching +35.0% and tablets flat at +0.3% compared to 2018.