Retail Pulse - September 2010

Household and Leisure hold their position at the top regarding positive news stories throughout August.

Notably there has been an increase in positive news relating to Catering. This may be due to news such as Starbucks poaching fashion retailer New Look’s head of property and TGI Fridays plans to expand its chain of 46 restaurants with 16 new outlets over the next five years.

Clothing and Footwear, and Catering remain low in terms of positive news against the 2005 base.

Personal Goods shows a marked decrease in August compared to the 2005 base. Food remains the lowest, suffering from a decrease of 9.8% down on August 2009.

FSP on average review over 350 unique items of retailer news. Each article is then scored according to sentiment. RNI is the sum of these scores indexed against 2005 and averaged over a three month period. The RNI time series for all retailers starts from May 2002.

The FSP Accounts Barometer monitors retailers' financial health.

The latest data include all retailers who have reported for the year to December 2009. The percentage of UK high street retailers deemed Healthy was 38%. PLCs are generally financially stronger than average, with 51% deemed Healthy.

This picture will continue to change, and hopefully grow as more retailers file their accounts.

Recent SnapShop enhancements now mean that members can be notified when their chosen retailers file accounts.

This month the most talked about retailers over the past month, according to SnapShop and the Retail Burn include M&S, Gap, Greggs, H&M, White Stuff, Starbucks, House of Fraser, Waterstone's, TGI Friday's, Links of London, Ed Hardy, Dolce & Gabbana, Whitbread PLC, Focus, Fat Face, ASDA, American Apparel, New Look JJB Sports and Mitchells & Butlers.

The retailer recording the most amount from positively rated articles of the last month is M&S. The company has partnered with Oxfam to create a one day event where customers can donate unwanted clothing into M&S stores to raise £1m for the charity.

Mitchells & Butlers has attracted the most negative press with the news that the Hospitality group has announced plans to sell off a further 333 pubs from its chain.

Other noteable stories include: Gap has soft launched its first transactional websites in the UK and US coffee chain Starbucks has poached fashion retailer New Look’s head of property.

The Hot 100 in August 2010 includes;

• Affordable furniture store, DFS
• Quirky fashion store Urban Outfitters
• Family fashion, Boden
• Luxury hand bag and luggage, Mulberry.
• Men and Womens wear TM Lewin,
• Young fashion store Republic
• Jewellers Thomas Sabo
• Specialist fragrance retailer The Perfume Shop

The furniture store DFS has reported a particularly strong year end. This goes in line with their plans to open 10 – 12 stores a year.

These highly sustainable businesses have consistently delighted their loyal customers, have prudently managed their finances and have cautiously expanded, maintaining their appeal…