March sees the first of the retail results – and a very mixed bag they promise to be. But the retail season got off to a good start with some excellent figures from Morrisons.

Food retailers

Morrisons’ figures were excellent, and while it is coming from a low base it deserves credit for achieving a turnaround in very tough trading conditions. Sainsbury’s, up against more challenging comparatives also reported strong sales growth. Aldi’s sales figures were a little disappointing after the growth reported in 2008. M&S is the only food retailer to be reporting sales falls.

March sees the first of the retail results – and a very mixed bag they promise to be. But the retail season got off to a good start with some excellent figures from Morrisons.

Food retailers

Morrisons’ figures were excellent, and while it is coming from a low base it deserves credit for achieving a turnaround in very tough trading conditions. Sainsbury’s, up against more challenging comparatives also reported strong sales growth. Aldi’s sales figures were a little disappointing after the growth reported in 2008. M&S is the only food retailer to be reporting sales falls.

The NBTY (Holland & Barrett) acquisition of Julian Graves has been referred to the Competition Commission – far from an obvious decision and one wonders if the CC is short of work.

Clothing

The news from clothing was almost uniformly bad. Profit falls or losses were the order of the day, even for previous high flyers like Ted Baker. The one bright spot was Peacocks benefitting not only from trading down, but from adding that necessary amount of fashionability as well.