Despite lockdowns, domestic retail has maneuvered well through the Corona crisis, as preliminary figures from Statistics Austria show. According to this, sales in the industry last year were an average of 2.9 percent higher than in 2020. However, compared to the pre-crisis year 2019, retail sales were 2.7 percent higher. In December of the previous year, retailers nominally increased their turnover by 2.9 percent, but adjusted for the currently high inflation, a minus of 0.7 percent remained.
Differences by industry
The sales development in petrol stations with minus nine percent and in the clothing and shoe trade with minus 21 percent was well below 2019, compared to 2020 the shoe and clothing shops would have turned over two percent more, according to Statistics Austria. “When making comparisons with the same period last year, it must be taken into account that a large number of companies were affected to varying degrees by closures and other restrictions due to the measures taken to combat the corona pandemic in 2020 and 2021,” comments Statistics Austria on Friday and cosmetics increased significantly by just over nine percent.In the furniture, do-it-yourself and electrical goods trade, sales increased by 2.3 percent compared to 2020, in other retail trade, which includes the book trade and sporting goods trade, the increase was almost five The mail-order and online trade achieved growth of 1.1 percent, while food was slightly down compared to 2020 at 0.4 percent.
Same number of shopping days, fewer selling days
According to Statistics Austria, retailers were able to sell their goods on 303 days in 2021, and customers had just as much time to go shopping. According to Statistics Austria, the number of sales days depends on the industry, and the number of sales days has also decreased in the last two years due to the Corona measures.
Source: Nachrichten
