Retailers, brands see 5-10% on-year growth in Independence period sales
Retailers and brands said there has been a 5-10% growth in sales during the Independence period sales this year as compared to last, driven by improvement in sentiments, premiumisation with a marginal recovery in volume or number of units sold for categories like smartphones and laptops, industry executives said.
While consumers lapped up premium products in cities and large towns continuing the trend of the last three years, demand in rural areas continued to be muted this month.
“Consumer sentiment appears to have improved a bit more than what it was for the rest of the year. We expect 5-10% growth in sales while volume wise there might be an improvement only in the grab and go categories like mobile phones and laptops,” said Nilesh Gupta, director at Vijay Sales, a leading consumer electronic retail chain in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Ahmedabad.
Departmental store chain Lifestyle chief executive officer Devaranjan Iyer said consumer sentiments have turned positive in the first two weeks of August and with the long Independence Day weekend, we expect the growth to continue. “We are expecting to do better than last year. This year, April and May were bad, but July onwards sales have picked up. The momentum is expected to continue till festive season,” he said.
I-Day sales is the third largest sales period in India after festive season and Republic Day, and is an indicator for demand in the upcoming festive season spanning with Onam and ending with Diwali.
Companies like Samsung, Reliance Retail, LG India, Vijay
