The return to normal life this year has made the ecommerce boom of the prior two years – when online buying surged – seem a distant memory, replaced by diminished sales, layoffs and reduced growth expectations.
The first half of 2022 has seen a wave of layoffs and spending cutbacks at firms that were flying high during the pandemic from Amazon to Allbirds to Wayfair. Cost-cutting measures have often been announced in connection with flat or falling year-on-year sales as people reverted to more typical shopping habits, benefiting bricks-and-mortar stores at the expense of online ones.
Writ large, online retail sales in the UK in July fell 4.3% (seasonally adjusted) from a year ago, while overall retail rose 7.8%, according to the Office for National Statistics. And the proportion of online retail, at 26.3%, is well off the peak of 37.5% in February 2021, but still above the pre-pandemic level of about 20%.