What a miserable year it’s proving to be for eCommerce. Revenue has performed well below expectation, site traffic overall has seen barely any growth in 2024 so far and conversion remains suppressed. Summer hasn’t happened, which makes it very difficult to work through seasonal stock, the economic outlook remains bleak (even if, whisper it, inflation is becoming a little more stable) and shoppers are being far more careful with their discretionary spend than general merchandise retailers would like.

Health & Beauty Defies the Trend with Impressive Growth

That is, unless you happen to be a health & beauty retailer. Every week when we get our numbers in from the 220 retailers in our online sales index (which is based on an annual sample of £27bn of online spend) it feels like we are tracking two entirely separate industries – health & beauty, which is consistently buoyant, and then most other product categories (there are a few sub-categories that have done relatively well in 2024, but the general point still holds).

Fragrance Sales Surge, Leading Health & Beauty to Success

There may be an element of that, but the reality appears to be a lot more complex as well. For the figures contain a contradiction to that theory – while the major sub-categories of health & beauty are all up YTD, the cheaper feelgood items would be found in makeup and skincare; the strongest growth we are seeing, however, is in fragrance, where items are relatively expensive (often £60+, and sometimes markedly higher depending on the brand) for a category where the typical basket value hovers around the £40 mark.

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