Retailers are upbeat about winter holidays

This year’s holidays are likely to generate sales of between 3.5 and 4bn euros in December in large stores, specialised networks, malls and luxury stores, according to ZF estimates starting from several market surveys and from retailers’ estimates for this period. The budget should account for between 15 and 20% in annual sales of consumer goods.

Optimism prevails on the retail market in Romania at the beginning of this month as traffic in stores is rising every day and retailers expect people to buy more than last year or at least as much as they did then
Retailers are each year waiting for the winter holidays to see their sales go up and whether the planned budget was hit. And in retail the budget largely depends on the trend of sales in December, which for part of retailers brings as much as 30-40% of annual sales.
“The entire year trend depends on how sales in December, in the Christmas period, go,” sums up Marius Căluian, general manager of MEMRB Romania and the Republic of Moldova, the importance of December sales for retailers.
Thus, after a 7% drop in the first eight months on the consumer goods market, a “good” Christmas is likely to reduce the impact over the entire year toward a decline of as much as 5%, while a scenario with weaker sales than last year would drive the decline of the entire market to around 10%, according to Căluian’s estimates.