Hot half hours a boon to retailers

 With recent retail figures momentarily denting confidence, the Australian Retailers Associations Hot Half Hours at Fashion Exposed are a timely boon for trade fair visitors. Topics will include profitable buying strategies, customer management, marketing, store layout for sale maximisation and visual merchandising, with sessions kept "short and succinct" to maximise fair goers' precious time.

Australian retail sales, expected to continue to rise after moving upwards in October and November 2009, have surprised the market by falling in December. The median market forecast was for a 0.2 per cent increase, but recently released data showed nominal retail sales recorded a fall of 0.7 per cent in seasonally adjusted terms for the month.

With the exception of the café, restaurants and take-away foods sector, which rose 2.5 per cent, all categories fell in the month. New South Wales was the only state to post a gain, recording a rise of 0.1 per cent.

According to economists at Westpac, the results cast doubts on the speed at which spending growth was taking hold in the wake of the fiscal stimulus measures, as the headline number suggested overall momentum was relatively lacklustre.

This finding has reversed some of the indications of previous months, as the 0.3 per cent increase in trend sales indicated an annual rate of growth of around 4 per cent, compared to previous estimates of an acceleration to around 5.5 per cent.