There was some good news on UK retail sales on Friday as official figures showed that they rebounded in January. Well, good news for every category except clothing/footwear, which wasn’t among the raft of winners during the month.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that retail sales volumes are estimated to have bounced back by 3.4% month-on-month after a fall of 3.3% in December. It was the largest monthly rise since April 2021, although the fact that sales fell by a hefty amount in the previous month meant that the January increase may have done little more than get us back to square one.

But taking a more optimistic view, as mentioned, sales volumes in all sub-sectors except clothing stores increased over the month, with food stores such as supermarkets contributing most to the increase.

However, the ONS said consumers “spent more for less in January 2024, as the 3.9% monthly rise in sales values (the amount spent) exceeded the 3.4% rise in sales volumes”.

Non-food stores sales volumes (that is, department, clothing, household and other non-food stores) returned to broadly expected levels, with a rise of 3% over the month following a 3.9% fall in December.

Some of the fall in December had been because of consumers purchasing Christmas gifts earlier, during the November Black Friday discounts.

January sales volumes in department stores specifically and ‘other’ non-food stores (such as sports equipment stores) rose over the month by 5.4% and 6.2%, respectively, with some retailers reporting the positive impact of January sales. But clothing stores fell by 1.4%, showing just how tough it is for the fashion sector at the moment as even generous January discounts couldn’t convince many consumers to part with their cash.

Online sales also fell across most sub-sectors, dropping by 4.1% overall compared to December. But again, when looking at the graph to show what was happening across the different sub-sectors, it was the bar for the fashion sector that looked the weakest with sales here falling over 15% online.