July 25, 2025 • 11 mins
Diane Wehrle CEO at Rendle Intelligence and Insights joins Simon for their monthly chat about footfall trends. The UK's summer heatwave has driven an 8.5% decline in high street retail sales compared to last year. This retail slump reflects a combination of weather impacts, calendar effects, and persistent economic headwinds affecting consumer spending patterns.
• UK high street footfall down 3% during June's heatwave periods
• Food spending up 4.1% while non-food spending increased only 2.2%
• Average Transaction Value remained relatively stable (down just 1.1%)
• Online spending holds steady at 26% of total retail sales since January
• Rising inflation (now 3.6%) and increasing unemployment creating consumer caution
• Post-COVID consumer priorities shifting toward holidays over retail purchases
• UK domestic tourism seeing growth during hot weather, but spending benefits bars and restaurants more than retail
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Productivity Podcast.
I'm delighted again to bejoined by Diane Wells, ceo and
founder of Rendell Intelligenceand Insights.
Hi, diane, how are you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm good, Simon.
Thank you.
How are you?
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Good, good, it's still warm.
It's been warm forever.
Unusually, in the UK we alwaystalk about the weather.
We can't cope when it's toocold, too warm, too wet, too dry
, but it has been exceptionallyhot.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
It has, and I think we're on our third little mini
heatwave, I think.
We are at the time of recording.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
We are indeed so May to June.
I think it was hot quite a lotof that, if memory serves me
right and exceptionally hot.
So has that been a good thingor a bad thing?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Well, I think it's been more.
If I had to put my money on itI'd probably say it's been more
of a bad thing.
Well, I think it's been more.
If I had to put my money on itI'd probably say it's been more
of a bad thing.
I think we you know UKconsumers don't really do well
in the heat and our shoppingenvironments aren't really
suited to the heat.
So we've got a few indicators.
Of course, we've got footfallin high streets and into stores,
and then we also have highstreet spending.
And then we also, on top ofthat, have the spending recorded
by the BRC, which includes towncentre and out of town, and
(01:05):
footfall into stores in highstreets was down 3%, so fewer
people were going into stores Inthe high streets.
As a whole, measured by MRI, itwas just about flat, about
minus 0.1.
But spending in high streets, asmeasured by Beauclair, was 8.5%
below June 2024.
Was eight and a half percentbelow June 2024, and a couple of
(01:29):
reasons for that.
One is, of course, the weather.
People tend to defer to otherlocations when it's very hot.
Last thing many shoppers wantto do is go and spend money in
town centres, particularly ahead, well ahead of this, the school
summer break.
It was very early June, tooearly to be by summer holiday
clothing and stuff, so theytended to want to go elsewhere.
But also there was a calendaroffset.
So Beauclair used the calendarmonth and in June there were
(01:52):
only nine Saturdays this yearversus 10 Saturdays last year.
So of course the fewer numberof Saturdays does impact the
results.
So a proportion of that 8.5%would have been bound up to that
offset.
So I'm thinking like for likeit would probably mean about
minus 5%, 4.5%, 5%.
So last year actually in Juneit was minus 3.8%.
(02:13):
So we've had two consecutiveyears of declining sales in June
.
So it's not particularly strongout there in retail at the
moment.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
No, and, as you say, I think the important note, you
know, food is Barbie food, isn'tit?
So that clearly goes up.
But we're not.
We're not set up in thiscountry to deal with the extreme
.
So retail parks, big tin sheds,not many air con unless
typically it's got food reallyuncomfortable to shopping.
When we get warm in thiscountry you don't typically then
(02:42):
go into the high street.
So and we were talking off airthe regional shopping centres,
your Meadow Halls, yourWestfields, your Trafford
centres, probably the betterplaces.
I don't know if, if there's anydata that shows they get bigger
footfall when it's really hotbecause they're the big open
spaces, but everything else justisn't a nice environment no, it
is not.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Naturally, the brc identified that food spending
went up by 4.1 percent, non-foodspending 2.2 percent, so double
the amount of increase in food,and that non-food spending
would have been everything andit would have been town center
and out of town.
So quite a few people wouldhave gone shopping for food and
bought whatever they neededwhilst they're in a nice cool
tesco store, as opposed to awaitress and their other
(03:25):
supermarkets are available.
So you know, you could see thedifference.
Really, the predominantly wasfood.
But also what the Beauclair datashows us is that actually in
high streets the ATV of spendingwas sort of on par with last
year.
It was only 1.1% down.
It was the number of customersand number of transactions they
made that dropped.
(03:45):
So there are just fewer peopleout there buying products.
They just didn't want to spend.
And of course, we lost thatSaturday, which would have
impacted stuff as well.
And food and drink in highstreets was 10.5% below June
2024, whereas in June 2024, ithad the 10 Saturdays it was 2.4%
up on 22.3.
(04:05):
So you can see the differencethe heat makes.
So, as always, we're blamingthe weather partly.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
We do.
We like to blame the weather,don't we?
And that theme is very familiar.
I mean, we talked I think itwas last month again about ATV
being relatively stable.
So there's just less peoplebuying.
The ones that are buying arebuying roughly the same, and I
know there's kind of post thismonth that we're talking about.
Inflation's gone up as well.
So there's still all theseheadwinds that we've talked
(04:35):
about now for what seems to beforever.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Absolutely, and I mean the government.
To be fair, it was.
You know the increase ininflation was forecast not that
that helps anyone particularly,but it's got.
You know.
Inflation's gone up to 3.6percent and that's occurred in,
you know, utilities for housing.
It's gone up by 7.5 percentpercent.
You know the, the, the uh, theeducational influence you know
(04:58):
that on a private education hasinfluenced it as well.
So lots of factors have goneinto that and people are having,
you know, having greaterexpenditure this year than they
did and it's tough, so theirdiscretionary spending
inevitably then has to fall.
The good, the good high spotreally is.
I looked at internet spendingas a proportion of total retail
spending and that stayedcompletely stable.
(05:20):
It's not moving up at all.
According to the ONS, in Mayonline spending remained at 26%
of total retail spend, which ithas been since January.
So whilst people are buyingquite a lot on online, obviously
quarter of all spendings onlinethree quarters is in store and
(05:41):
that's not shifting.
So there is some neutrality,some sort of you know, some,
some stability in that area good.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
So bricks and mortars , as I think we've always said,
it's here to stay.
There's not this jeopardy orscaremongering that went on and
any other kind of green shootsthings that we should be
thinking about.
I suppose we're at that time ofyear say, fortunately,
unfortunately we're, we'reheading post-school holidays.
We'll be into black friday week, won't we?
And then kind of christmasagain all of a sudden I know
(06:10):
it's scary, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (06:11):
I know we're at the half halfway point in the year
now and know I think I supposethe green shoots are that, you
know, the internet hasn'tovertaken bricks and mortar, as
we said, and in fact, actuallyin the clothing, footwear arena,
that proportion of spend onlinehas come down over the last six
months or so.
In December it was sitting at30%.
(06:32):
You know the few months beforethat, it was around 29, 28, 27,
it's now 26.
So you know, people have goneback to store to buy clothing.
Yes, of course people are.
You know, using the internet aspart of their natural buying
process.
I do, everyone does use it forresearch and and price
comparison.
But people are looking tostores and, whilst june was
(06:53):
difficult because of the heat,actually people do enjoy going
to stores and buying in storeand that is, you know, the thing
that I think we should keep.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Keep it in focus really yeah, and some good deals
out there as well there's youknow, blank blanket deals in M&S
of just under 20% off menswearfor those that are interested.
So you know there's some bigincentives to be had if you're
you're in the.
So again, as a consumer, it'sgood for us in terms of being
able to access those deals.
So we won't dwell.
(07:24):
We're kind of on this kind ofpath of uncertainty.
Still, that again, we've talkedabout on many an episode, I
think.
I suppose a couple of things tothrow in that we're seeing
Unemployment seems to be rising.
I'm sure everyone listening ison LinkedIn, you'll see less
people changing jobs or puttingtheir arm available to work
(07:48):
banner on when, unfortunately,they've been part of a
restructure.
Lots of restructures going onhead offices, field roles and,
unfortunately, kind ofstore-based roles as people look
to manage this cost-based,primarily driven by NI.
But I think some of that's abit of a smokescreen as well.
There'd be poor trade and poorprofit and all sorts of stuff.
(08:09):
So maybe we keep an eye on thatas much as we can in the next
couple of episodes, because Ithink that's something that's
going to start to take centrestage as we navigate towards
Christmas.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah, I agree completely.
And of course, people see otherpeople their friends and their
relatives, losing their jobs orin a difficult position, and it
means that they then rein theirspending back because they have
become fearful.
So that caution, that consumercautiousness that we always talk
about, is all pervasive, really, because you're thinking
actually, will it be me next?
Speaker 1 (08:37):
so the spending is pulled back, even if they don't
lose their job, because they'rejust nervous yeah, and someone
asked me this the other day andI don't know if you've got the
answers.
A bit of a left field question,but if it is so hot in the uk,
does that mean more people goabroad to get away from our heat
or more people stay at home toenjoy our weather?
(08:59):
I'm not quite.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
I don't quite know the answer no, and I mean if you
see the news reports ofbournemouth and scotland
scarborough, you see the beachis heaving with people.
I think in general people valueand place holidays higher up the
priority list than they didbefore COVID.
It's sort of more of amust-have now and people then
will divert what was spending onproducts and domestic stores to
(09:24):
holidays.
I think there are a lot offairly low-cost options for
foreign holidays and deferredpayment options.
So people, I think, willprobably opt a lot of people
will opt to go abroad just forsomething, for a change of scene
, and it is fairly expensive toholiday in the UK and so a lot
of people will do that.
(09:45):
So I think it's just the natureof how people are prizing
holidays very highly, and ifthey go to a coastal resort in
the UK it doesn't mean theynecessarily go shopping either.
They'll go and spend in barsand restaurants, which is great,
but it won't always be in thetown centre and so it doesn't
mean that the town centres andthe shopping centres will
benefit from that either.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Interesting.
So yeah, that would be aninteresting one to keep an eye
on as the summers seem to gethotter and drier.
Actually, does thateconomically have a big impact?
Or do we adapt?
And you know, I assume the morepeople that stay in the country
and go to seaside resorts putit back into our economy, don't
they, ultimately, and not intosomebody else's?
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yeah, absolutely.
It does go into the sort of,you know, gb limited economy
absolutely, and that's alwayshelpful.
But I, I probably I think thatour, our holiday industry, our
domestic holiday industry, isprobably kitted up or used to
this influx of people due toincredibly hot weather.
All the time we were sort ofused to lesser numbers because
(10:48):
the weather's been so regularlypoor and suddenly you get these
huge numbers of people headingtowards coastal resource and
they're still saying we can'tcope, we can't cope.
So I think there's someadjustments to be had and to be
made there as well yep anopportunity yeah, absolutely
brilliant.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
We'll pause there.
Fantastic to chat, as ever,consistent theme.
I think let's see where thenext couple of months take us as
we start to navigate intoprobably most retailers key
trading period.
So thanks again, we'll catch up.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Great, simon, thank you.
Welcome to the Productivity Podcast.
I'm delighted again to bejoined by Diane Wells, ceo and
founder of Rendell Intelligenceand Insights.
Hi, diane, how are you doing?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm good, Simon.
Thank you.
How are you?
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Good, good, it's still warm.
It's been warm forever.
Unusually, in the UK we alwaystalk about the weather.
We can't cope when it's toocold, too warm, too wet, too dry
, but it has been exceptionallyhot.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
It has, and I think we're on our third little mini
heatwave, I think.
We are at the time of recording.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
We are indeed so May to June.
I think it was hot quite a lotof that, if memory serves me
right and exceptionally hot.
So has that been a good thingor a bad thing?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Well, I think it's been more.
If I had to put my money on itI'd probably say it's been more
of a bad thing.
Well, I think it's been more.
If I had to put my money on itI'd probably say it's been more
of a bad thing.
I think we you know UKconsumers don't really do well
in the heat and our shoppingenvironments aren't really
suited to the heat.
So we've got a few indicators.
Of course, we've got footfallin high streets and into stores,
and then we also have highstreet spending.
And then we also, on top ofthat, have the spending recorded
by the BRC, which includes towncentre and out of town, and
(01:05):
footfall into stores in highstreets was down 3%, so fewer
people were going into stores Inthe high streets.
As a whole, measured by MRI, itwas just about flat, about
minus 0.1.
But spending in high streets, asmeasured by Beauclair, was 8.5%
below June 2024.
Was eight and a half percentbelow June 2024, and a couple of
(01:29):
reasons for that.
One is, of course, the weather.
People tend to defer to otherlocations when it's very hot.
Last thing many shoppers wantto do is go and spend money in
town centres, particularly ahead, well ahead of this, the school
summer break.
It was very early June, tooearly to be by summer holiday
clothing and stuff, so theytended to want to go elsewhere.
But also there was a calendaroffset.
So Beauclair used the calendarmonth and in June there were
(01:52):
only nine Saturdays this yearversus 10 Saturdays last year.
So of course the fewer numberof Saturdays does impact the
results.
So a proportion of that 8.5%would have been bound up to that
offset.
So I'm thinking like for likeit would probably mean about
minus 5%, 4.5%, 5%.
So last year actually in Juneit was minus 3.8%.
(02:13):
So we've had two consecutiveyears of declining sales in June
.
So it's not particularly strongout there in retail at the
moment.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
No, and, as you say, I think the important note, you
know, food is Barbie food, isn'tit?
So that clearly goes up.
But we're not.
We're not set up in thiscountry to deal with the extreme
.
So retail parks, big tin sheds,not many air con unless
typically it's got food reallyuncomfortable to shopping.
When we get warm in thiscountry you don't typically then
(02:42):
go into the high street.
So and we were talking off airthe regional shopping centres,
your Meadow Halls, yourWestfields, your Trafford
centres, probably the betterplaces.
I don't know if, if there's anydata that shows they get bigger
footfall when it's really hotbecause they're the big open
spaces, but everything else justisn't a nice environment no, it
is not.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Naturally, the brc identified that food spending
went up by 4.1 percent, non-foodspending 2.2 percent, so double
the amount of increase in food,and that non-food spending
would have been everything andit would have been town center
and out of town.
So quite a few people wouldhave gone shopping for food and
bought whatever they neededwhilst they're in a nice cool
tesco store, as opposed to awaitress and their other
(03:25):
supermarkets are available.
So you know, you could see thedifference.
Really, the predominantly wasfood.
But also what the Beauclair datashows us is that actually in
high streets the ATV of spendingwas sort of on par with last
year.
It was only 1.1% down.
It was the number of customersand number of transactions they
made that dropped.
(03:45):
So there are just fewer peopleout there buying products.
They just didn't want to spend.
And of course, we lost thatSaturday, which would have
impacted stuff as well.
And food and drink in highstreets was 10.5% below June
2024, whereas in June 2024, ithad the 10 Saturdays it was 2.4%
up on 22.3.
(04:05):
So you can see the differencethe heat makes.
So, as always, we're blamingthe weather partly.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
We do.
We like to blame the weather,don't we?
And that theme is very familiar.
I mean, we talked I think itwas last month again about ATV
being relatively stable.
So there's just less peoplebuying.
The ones that are buying arebuying roughly the same, and I
know there's kind of post thismonth that we're talking about.
Inflation's gone up as well.
So there's still all theseheadwinds that we've talked
(04:35):
about now for what seems to beforever.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Absolutely, and I mean the government.
To be fair, it was.
You know the increase ininflation was forecast not that
that helps anyone particularly,but it's got.
You know.
Inflation's gone up to 3.6percent and that's occurred in,
you know, utilities for housing.
It's gone up by 7.5 percentpercent.
You know the, the, the uh, theeducational influence you know
(04:58):
that on a private education hasinfluenced it as well.
So lots of factors have goneinto that and people are having,
you know, having greaterexpenditure this year than they
did and it's tough, so theirdiscretionary spending
inevitably then has to fall.
The good, the good high spotreally is.
I looked at internet spendingas a proportion of total retail
spending and that stayedcompletely stable.
(05:20):
It's not moving up at all.
According to the ONS, in Mayonline spending remained at 26%
of total retail spend, which ithas been since January.
So whilst people are buyingquite a lot on online, obviously
quarter of all spendings onlinethree quarters is in store and
(05:41):
that's not shifting.
So there is some neutrality,some sort of you know, some,
some stability in that area good.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
So bricks and mortars , as I think we've always said,
it's here to stay.
There's not this jeopardy orscaremongering that went on and
any other kind of green shootsthings that we should be
thinking about.
I suppose we're at that time ofyear say, fortunately,
unfortunately we're, we'reheading post-school holidays.
We'll be into black friday week, won't we?
And then kind of christmasagain all of a sudden I know
(06:10):
it's scary, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (06:11):
I know we're at the half halfway point in the year
now and know I think I supposethe green shoots are that, you
know, the internet hasn'tovertaken bricks and mortar, as
we said, and in fact, actuallyin the clothing, footwear arena,
that proportion of spend onlinehas come down over the last six
months or so.
In December it was sitting at30%.
(06:32):
You know the few months beforethat, it was around 29, 28, 27,
it's now 26.
So you know, people have goneback to store to buy clothing.
Yes, of course people are.
You know, using the internet aspart of their natural buying
process.
I do, everyone does use it forresearch and and price
comparison.
But people are looking tostores and, whilst june was
(06:53):
difficult because of the heat,actually people do enjoy going
to stores and buying in storeand that is, you know, the thing
that I think we should keep.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Keep it in focus really yeah, and some good deals
out there as well there's youknow, blank blanket deals in M&S
of just under 20% off menswearfor those that are interested.
So you know there's some bigincentives to be had if you're
you're in the.
So again, as a consumer, it'sgood for us in terms of being
able to access those deals.
So we won't dwell.
(07:24):
We're kind of on this kind ofpath of uncertainty.
Still, that again, we've talkedabout on many an episode, I
think.
I suppose a couple of things tothrow in that we're seeing
Unemployment seems to be rising.
I'm sure everyone listening ison LinkedIn, you'll see less
people changing jobs or puttingtheir arm available to work
(07:48):
banner on when, unfortunately,they've been part of a
restructure.
Lots of restructures going onhead offices, field roles and,
unfortunately, kind ofstore-based roles as people look
to manage this cost-based,primarily driven by NI.
But I think some of that's abit of a smokescreen as well.
There'd be poor trade and poorprofit and all sorts of stuff.
(08:09):
So maybe we keep an eye on thatas much as we can in the next
couple of episodes, because Ithink that's something that's
going to start to take centrestage as we navigate towards
Christmas.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah, I agree completely.
And of course, people see otherpeople their friends and their
relatives, losing their jobs orin a difficult position, and it
means that they then rein theirspending back because they have
become fearful.
So that caution, that consumercautiousness that we always talk
about, is all pervasive, really, because you're thinking
actually, will it be me next?
Speaker 1 (08:37):
so the spending is pulled back, even if they don't
lose their job, because they'rejust nervous yeah, and someone
asked me this the other day andI don't know if you've got the
answers.
A bit of a left field question,but if it is so hot in the uk,
does that mean more people goabroad to get away from our heat
or more people stay at home toenjoy our weather?
(08:59):
I'm not quite.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
I don't quite know the answer no, and I mean if you
see the news reports ofbournemouth and scotland
scarborough, you see the beachis heaving with people.
I think in general people valueand place holidays higher up the
priority list than they didbefore COVID.
It's sort of more of amust-have now and people then
will divert what was spending onproducts and domestic stores to
(09:24):
holidays.
I think there are a lot offairly low-cost options for
foreign holidays and deferredpayment options.
So people, I think, willprobably opt a lot of people
will opt to go abroad just forsomething, for a change of scene
, and it is fairly expensive toholiday in the UK and so a lot
of people will do that.
(09:45):
So I think it's just the natureof how people are prizing
holidays very highly, and ifthey go to a coastal resort in
the UK it doesn't mean theynecessarily go shopping either.
They'll go and spend in barsand restaurants, which is great,
but it won't always be in thetown centre and so it doesn't
mean that the town centres andthe shopping centres will
benefit from that either.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Interesting.
So yeah, that would be aninteresting one to keep an eye
on as the summers seem to gethotter and drier.
Actually, does thateconomically have a big impact?
Or do we adapt?
And you know, I assume the morepeople that stay in the country
and go to seaside resorts putit back into our economy, don't
they, ultimately, and not intosomebody else's?
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yeah, absolutely.
It does go into the sort of,you know, gb limited economy
absolutely, and that's alwayshelpful.
But I, I probably I think thatour, our holiday industry, our
domestic holiday industry, isprobably kitted up or used to
this influx of people due toincredibly hot weather.
All the time we were sort ofused to lesser numbers because
(10:48):
the weather's been so regularlypoor and suddenly you get these
huge numbers of people headingtowards coastal resource and
they're still saying we can'tcope, we can't cope.
So I think there's someadjustments to be had and to be
made there as well yep anopportunity yeah, absolutely
brilliant.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
We'll pause there.
Fantastic to chat, as ever,consistent theme.
I think let's see where thenext couple of months take us as
we start to navigate intoprobably most retailers key
trading period.
So thanks again, we'll catch up.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Great, simon, thank you.
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