According to a statement released by MasterCard Spending Pulse, apparel business is registering high single-digit growth this Holiday Season. Womenswear segment alone observed double digit growth this season.
The report states that retail sales (apart from auto and gas) zoomed 7.9 per cent between Black Friday and Christmas Eve in a Year-over-Year (Y-o-Y) comparison to last year. Sarah Quinlan, Senior Vice President – Market Insights for MasterCard Advisors, averred that business has been good, in spite of apprehensions about performance of retail sales. “After a slow start, I’m very happy to see that the holiday season was hot for retailers. We saw some very promising trends,” Sarah mentioned.
Also Read – Forecast for holiday season sales upbeat
However, the apparel industry is observing that there is a shift in the way US consumers shop during Holiday Season as footfall at physical stores dipped while online retail business surged.
Shelly Kohan, RetailNext’s Vice President of Retail Consulting averred, “The weekend continued to demonstrate the emergence and importance of mobile shopping, and shoppers increasingly used digital devices to shop brands, research products, compare pricing and make purchases.”
MasterCard SpendingPulse reports US retail sales across all payments types. The outcomes are based on aggregate sales activity in the MasterCard payments network, together with survey-based estimates for other payment forms.
