That time of year

Christmas is time of giving and slowing down to spend time with the family.

For retailers and especially people at the retail frontlines (stores and logistics) it is the busiest time of year.

For most segments of retailing, the busiest weeks are behind us. However, for everyone working in the grocery value chain these are the busiest days of the year.

For grocery retailers Christmas week can have double the sales compared to an average week. However, Christmas plays a much bigger role in some other retail categories.

DIY, Restaurants and Groceries get 15 - 17% of their annual sales during the Christmas time.

Department Stores get up to 23,6% of their sales during the festive season. No wonder they start advertising Christmas so soon. Also Clothing and Electronics are traditional gifts categories and rely heavily on Christmas.

Another category, which is focused heavily on gifting is books. For them also sales pick up rapidly for November & December. The image illustrates how book retailing in Finland skews towards the gifting season. The other chart depicts how much hypermarkets get their revenues during the Christmas, which is after all years biggest food festivity.

Hypermarkets are the category within food retailing, which gets biggest uplift during Christmas: 19% (compared to 17,5% in all grocery).