While Easter remains a major shopping event on the retail calendar, this year’s four-day holiday (29 March-1 April) was a particularly strong one, given cost of living restraints. And it was impressive demand for beauty that helped drive a host of positive numbers, among them fashion, showing the sector’s getting stronger as the spring season arrives. However, the household sector had a long weekend to forget.

Despite the financial pressures facing households, and inflation still 3.4%, Easter 2024 saw a strong uplift in spending from last Easter, representing an increase in real terms, noted combine figures from Sensormatic/Beauclair/Rendle show. The report also pointed to consumers having saving up to spend more during the holiday.

Although Easter was earlier in the calendar than it has been for a number of years – which often leads to fewer trips and spending due to cooler more erratic weather – both footfall into stores (Sensormatic) and spend in towns and cities (Beauclair) were 7% higher than across Easter 2023.

Retail parks also continued to be a destination of choice, with footfall into stores up an impressive 10.7% on a year ago, although “it’s likely that a large proportion of these trips will have been into food stores”, the report noted.

All of Beauclair’s five key retail categories (accounting for 80% of spend) – Fashion, Hospitality, General retail, Grocery, and Health & Beauty – all recorded rises in sales from a year ago.

But it was Health & Beauty that topped the spend chart, up an impressive 20% year-on-year, with transition numbers up 15%, daily customer numbers up 13% and average transaction value rising 6%.

Fashion sales over Easter were 6% higher on a year ago and transaction numbers also rose 6%, the number of customers a day lifted 5%, although transaction value remained flat.

The report said that was “really positive news for a [fashion] sector that recorded noticeable annual drops in sales over both January and February (-8.4% on average)”.

It added that  “an improved result in March of an annual decline of just -1.4% suggests that Fashion spending is starting to strengthen, which is encouraging news for stores and destinations alike”.

However, the Household sector – traditionally a strong category of spending over Easter – had a torrid time with spend 20% below Easter 2023, as transaction numbers almost halved (49%) and customers a day was down 48%.

The strongest trading days over Easter continued to be Good Friday and Easter Saturday, with footfall into stores up an average 9.9% from last Easter. Easter Monday sales came in at +1.8%.

Spending rose by an average of +8% on Good Friday and Easter Saturday, versus +5% on Easter Monday.

The increase in overall spend was driven by a 2% increase in the number of customers who made purchases, a 4% increase in the number of transactions and a 3% rise in the average transaction value.

Diane Wehrle, CEO and founder of Rendle Intelligence and Insights, said: “The fact that in March consumers held out for Easter to visit stores and destinations and to spend, reflects the ongoing challenges on household budgets, and suggests that peaks in customer activity are even more likely to be focused around peak trading periods than they were previously.

“Whilst there was an uplift in footfall and spend over the Easter weekend, this may in part have been a case of ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’, as a comparison with footfall and spend over the month of March as a whole clearly revealed that consumers had saved their budgets for the bank holiday weekend.”