London Fashion Week boosts indy store sales in September - data

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Sep 20, 2018

With plenty of fashion-focused visitors in town and the media talking about the fashion sector in the past seven days, it seems that London Fashion Week provided a boost to sales at London’s independent fashion stores over the course of the event. Those stores saw a 68% sales increase on Saturday alone.

Figures from cloud-based retail management software Vend, based on actual customer transaction data, showed that independent fashion retailers enjoyed a big sales uplift on key LFW-linked September days, compared to August. 

And while that Saturday surge was a one-off, encouragingly, London’s independent fashion retailers also saw a big sales rise overall compared to London Fashion Week last year, with sales rising as much as 24%.

How reliable is that data? Given that Vend works with hundreds of London’s independent retailers, we can probably safely assume that its figures do go some way to showing just how much London Fashion Week impacted the real world of retail in the UK's capital.
 
“There’s a big halo effect that events like Fashion Week create for our high street stores, not to mention an influx of style-savvy shoppers,” said Higor Torchia, Country Manager for Vend UK. “And while it’s all about big-name designers and large fashion brands on the runway, our independent retailers are also on show as shoppers get to explore the products they create and sell, and the unique customer experiences they provide. With September said to be the biggest month for retailers outside of Christmas, it’s really great to see local stores getting a boost this past week.”

And as well as fashion being the big beneficiary from LFW, homewares, gifts, food & beverage, and hobby retailers also saw increases during the event. Homewares and gifts were up 21%, speciality food & beverage rose 14%, and hobby and leisure retailers (which includes sewing and fabric stores, and bookstores) rose by the same percentage.