At first glance the sales trend for Sport Footwear for the early phase of the 2013 back-to-school season might look like a precursor of general weakness for the whole season, but a deeper look inside the early numbers from SportScanInfo may tell a much more positive story.
The SportsOneSource Group is reporting that Sport Footwear sales for the two-week back-to-school (BTS) season-to-date trend are up nearly 3 percent versus the comparable two-week period last year. That trend falls well short of the overall fiscal year-to-date trend of positive growth of nearly 7 percent. But looking inside the numbers the data indicates that the early trend this year is actually more positive than the previous two years.
“Sport Footwear sales were up almost 3 percent for the first two weeks of back-to-school through August 3,” said James Hartford, CEO and chief market analyst at The SportsOneSource Group. “However, sales at this point last year were up less than 2 percent and finished the season up over 6 percent. Sales actually fell nearly 1 percent in the first two weeks of the 2011 back-to-school season and finished up approximately 4 percent for the total 8-week season through mid-September.”
As Sport Footwear sales continue to move deeper into the back-to-school season, Hartford suggested that this may bode very well for this year.
Based on the weekly point-of-sale data compiled through the SportScanInfo platform, the first two weeks of the back-to-school season in 2010 represented 23.8 percent of overall season sales. For 2011, that percentage dipped to 22.7 percent and declined further in 2012 to 21.8 percent of the total back-to-school season.
“Given this trend line, we expect to see high-single-digit growth for the overall season,” said Hartford.
The ability to track seasonal trends in-season is a new feature available to all subscribers to the SportScanInfo, SSI Performance and OIA VantagePoint sales trend reporting platforms. Users can now measure comparative trends as each season progresses with a single click of the mouse.
The SportsOneSource Group
The SportsOneSource Group is a full service market research company delivering solutions through consumer insight research, retail insight research and retail point-of-sale trending and analysis. The company provides the most reliable, timely and comprehensive sports and outdoor industry information available in the market today. SportScanInfo, SSI Performance and OIA VantagePoint are powered by a proprietary SportsOneSource technology platform developed to compile, aggregate and disseminate aggregated retail point-of-sale trending information. The SportsOneSource Group also publishes the Sports Executive Weekly and The B.O.S.S. Report executive newsletters, along with the SGB and SGB Performance print publications and their related online, email and digital products.
For more information about The SportsOneSource Group or SportScanInfo, call 303.997.7302 or email SportScan@SportsOneSource.com.
