JobKeeper fuels 'major hunger' for new sneakers

Young Australians flush with JobKeeper cash are leading a boom in discretionary online spending, retailers say.

Daniel Agostinelli, chief executive of Accent Group – which runs about 500 retail stores across 10 different brands including Athlete’s Foot, Hype DC, Platypus and Vans – said sales to 18- to 30-year-olds had been strong during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“JobKeeper in our view is certainly fuelling a lot of that,” Mr Agostinelli said. “It really resonated with kids that they had some money. They seem pretty confident their casual jobs will continue and they’re buying.”

Mr Agostinelli said last week Accent recorded its largest ever online trading day when it held a “click frenzy” event offering a range of discount items.

Commonwealth Bank spending data for the week ending Friday, May 15, showed significant improvements in spending trends compared with April.

“Spending on clothing and footwear is staging a noticeable recovery, down 17 per cent over the year compared to being around 60 per cent lower over the year in April,” CBA senior economist Kristina Allen said.

“As restrictions lift, we are seeing an improvement in spending in-store … [and] spending online is still growing at a decent pace and is up 8 per cent over the year.”

Mr Agostinelli said there had been a “major hunger for new sneakers” since JobKeeper began, and sales had increased since the group closed its stores on March 29.

“The shift to online sales in our world has been seismic compared to what it was pre-COVID.

“We are in a bit of a fortunate position that our core consumer being 18 to 30 is a lot more resilient to what’s going on in the rest of the market.”

Empty super accounts

Online retailer THE ICONIC experienced huge growth in categories such as activewear and loungewear – which includes items such as sweats and slippers – across all demographics.

Among younger shoppers, appetite for fashion and sportswear has remained strong with brands such as Nike, Adidas, Champion, P.E. Nation and Assembly Label all experiencing growth during the coronavirus pandemic.

Insights from THE ICONIC show younger shoppers are continuing to snap up seasonal trend items such as bright coloured knits, cropped cardigans and leather-look jackets.

Premier Investments, which runs a stable of seven retail brands including Just Jeans, Jay Jays, Portmans, Dotti and the Smiggle stationery chain, said customers were responding at different speed depending on which state they were in.

"Each state is at a different level,'' Premier's Retail chief executive Mark McInnes said.

The group's Queensland stores had reopened before stores in the rest of Australia because restrictions on shopping centres were loosened first, and customers had been generally more positive after being encouraged to go out and spend by the state's Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

All of Premier's 900 outlets in Australia had reopened by May 15 after a six-week shutdown imposed by the company.

But Labor’s financial services spokesperson Stephen Jones sounded a warning after Tax Office data supplied to the Senate inquiry into the government’s COVID-19 response showed about 450,000 people under 30 had drawn down on their superannuation during the outbreak.

“Over half of all of the applications under this new scheme have come from people under the age of 30,” Mr Jones said, adding he believed about 450,000 young Australians had “probably drained their superannuation account”.