TORONTO — While retail sales edged down by 0.7 percent year-over-year in Q1, retail consultant Ed Strapagiel says there’s more to the story behind those numbers. “Only about the second half of March was impacted by the COVID-19 shutdown, and for March alone the decline in Canadian retail sales was a whopping 10.9 percent,” he writes. “This is the sort of result, or worse, that we can expect in the April numbers when they are released.”
In March, the store merchandise sector took a 10.4 percent hit year-over-year, but as retail shutdowns began only in the middle of the month April’s numbers are “likely to be significantly worse,” according to Strapagiel. The exception was the building material and garden supply sub-sector, which was up 2.4 percent in March and up a healthy 4.6 percent year to date. Also healthy: general merchandise retailers including big boxes like Costco and Walmart, which double as supermarkets and have strong online channels. Those retailers logged gains of 6.2 percent in their March sales.
