Retail Sales Survey Q4 2013

So the time has come around again to report Q4 for 2013 to the States Statistics Unit and the results we shall we say interesting.

So let's start simply with the good news 2013 represents the best year to date.

As a quarterly comparison the takings in the shop were down by about 34% this is largely due to not making two £5,000 sales in October this year which we made in 2012. Both November and December saw gains on a monthly basis.

But the real growth came largely on the internet and largely as a result of translating our web offerings into French, German, Italian and Spanish with phenomenol sales to Germany in particular.

What conclusions can we draw?

Locally whilst we had more actual customers, the amount that each customer spent was reduced. This is hardly surprising given the continuing escalation - not only in the rate of taxation but in the differential between the growth in wages and the growth in the cost of goods. With real inflation running at around 9% each year and wages rising 1% to 2%. Jersey people are simply getting poorer as each year passes.

We did well on the internet largely due to the number of our competitors who have gone under in the preceding twelve months; it is a hostile and competitive environment in which to operate but we did gain from opening up new markets, markets in which we are able to effectively compete against existing participants. The people in the UK are faring no better than those in Jersey. There was a marked increase in fraud and attempted fraud, particularly on Amazon, and as such we have re-focussed on Ebay as the main platform for selling.