November wasn’t a great month for retail sales. That’s the conclusion of the latest BDO High Street Sales Tracker. It said total sales in discretionary spend categories fell 5.3% in November.

Just how bad is that? Well, it’s the worst total sales performance for several years and came due to “cost-of-living pressures and wider economic anxiety holding back consumer spending”, while “retailers brace for further financial challenges next spring”.

The accountancy and business advisory firm’s tracker shows negative sales growth both in-store and online and the drop was even worse than the dip a year ago when overall November sales also declined, but only by 0.3%.

While sales were poor in physical stores with a more-than-5% decline that was the worst result since March 2022, they were more worrying online, falling 7.8% and in this case that was the weakest result since February 2021. 

Worse still, BDO said the fashion sector recorded particularly poor online figures, down 8% compared to November 2023. While it might have expected extreme weather conditions in November to impact in-store sales, online sales are usually less negatively impacted by poor weather.

Sophie Michael, Head of Retail and Wholesale at BDO, said of all this: “These results are disastrous for the retail sector, with just one more month of the so-called Golden Quarter left. Despite the hype around events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we’ve seen heavy and prolonged discounting throughout most of November, but this has failed to get consumers spending.

“All retailers and particularly those operating within the discretionary spend category, will face an even tougher first quarter in 2025 should this sales trajectory continue into the final weeks of this year.

“The industry has been very vocal about the detrimental impact that some of the measures announced in the Autumn Budget will have on their cash flow and on their bottom line from next spring. This sense of economic anxiety seems to have reached consumers too with the cost of living still higher than it has been in previous years and recent announcements about further rises to energy prices.

“Within this festive period, retailers also continue to face increasing competition for the consumer purse with many customers prioritising spend on leisure and hospitality experiences.”