German interactive traders expect double-digit sales growth for Christmas

The German distance-selling sector expects to generate strong Christmas sales growth of 16.9% to€9.7 billion this year, including a dramatic 41.8% hike in e-commerce sales, the country’s

This year’s expectations clearly exceed last year’s Christmas sales (€8.3 billion) and thee-commerce share is estimated to account for 80.4% of total sales with €7.8 billion, compared toonly €5.5 billion in 2012 (66.3% of total sales). The bvh stressed that it was now able to make arealistic forecast with the October and November figures being included in the calculation.

The association said that the strong e-commerce revenues reflect the tendency that online tradeis increasingly becoming an important ‘replenishment element’ for customers in the Germaninteractive trade during the Christmas period as well as for buying presents.

The top-selling product groups in terms of Christmas goods cover clothes with estimated sales of€2.4 billion, followed by books (€1.1 billion), media and consumer electronics (€772 million), toys(€236.4 million) as well as jewelry and watches (€214.3 million).

According to a separate bvh survey of interactive traders, the majority (54.9%) of the companiessurveyed described their Christmas expectations as ‘good’ or ‘very good’.

Even though the ‘very good’ expectation rate is lower than last year, it is compensated by aslight increase in ‘good’ expectations and there are considerably more companies expecting a ‘satisfactory’ business result this year.What is also positive is that fewer companies than lastyear expect poor business therefore reducing the percentage of ‘adequate’ and ‘deficient’expectations.

More than 40% of the respondents expect their revenues to rise during this year’s Christmasperiod while more than half of them forecast ‘constant’ sales. Only 8.5% expect their revenues todrop.

When asked about the ‘best-selling’ weeks in the Christmas business, the respondents named thelast week in November (31.8%) and the second week in December (34.1%).

In terms of special Christmas promotions, 52.3% of the interactive traders offer their customerssales discounts and special offers, 40.9% offer print products such as special catalogues andmagazines and 29.5% try to attract more customers through competitions.

In terms of returns, 80% of respondents expect the return rate to remain unchanged, based onlast year’s Christmas figures.

bvh executive director Christoph Wenk-Fischer commented: ” After the strong Christmas sales in2012, we were curious to see how the surveyed companies would evaluate this year ‘s business. Theresults confirm the development in the first weeks of the Christmas season and are in line with theexcellent figures generated for the industry so far this year.”