Shoe retailers noted sales increase on holidays

Retailers recorded an increase in the number of customers and an increase in sales at the May holidays. According to Watcom, from May 1 to May 10, attendance at clothing stores increased by 2014% compared to the same period in 6, sportswear and shoes - by 53%, shoes - by 78%.

Paradoxically, at the same time, the attendance of large shopping centers during this period fell by 20%, follows from a Watcom study. The company explains this by the fact that during these May holidays, many consumers decided to abandon spending on entertainment, and therefore they visited mostly street retail stores, rather than shopping centers, where the temptation to leave money is much higher.

Watcom Group CEO Roman Skorokhodov notes that one of the reasons for the increase in store traffic was that many Muscovites did not go abroad and remained at home due to currency fluctuations.

The significant increase in footwear store traffic recorded by Watcom researchers did not translate into sales growth, retailers say. Revenue from shoe stores did rise during the May holidays, but this was due to higher prices, not increased demand, said several shoe retailers. "Sales in rubles in the first ten days of May grew by 20%," says co-owner of the Econika chain Sergey Sarkisov. "However, in terms of the number of goods sold, sales fell by 10%." Summer footwear sales will peak in the second half of the month, Sarkisov says. In the meantime, consumers are responding hard to price increases, he concludes.

Most of the shopping center representatives surveyed did not confirm Watcom's estimates that attendance fell during the May holidays. Thus, Mikhail Loskutov from AFI-Development (the company manages the Afimall City shopping and entertainment center) claims that the increase in traffic to the shopping center from May 1 to May 11 was 28% compared to the same period last year. Attendance at the RIO mall on Leninsky Prospekt increased by 20% compared to 2014, says Zara Adzhemyan, head of the marketing and corporate communications department of Tashir Group.

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The increase in traffic was recorded not only by the owners of Moscow shopping centers, but also by regional ones: the growth in attendance at the Gallery Krasnodar shopping center in Krasnodar and Moremall in Sochi amounted to about 10%, said Tatyana Korsakova, head of the marketing department at TPS-Real Estate.

The only shopping center surveyed to recognize a drop in traffic during the holidays is the Vremena Goda luxury gallery on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. True, according to Andrey Plugar, a representative of Avica Property Investors, which owns the shopping center, the drop was insignificant - just over 1%. At the same time, on May 9, the shopping center was visited by 10% more people than in 2014, he added.