Methodology

As one of the UK’s most trusted and recognised retail barometers, the HSST offers a comprehensive view of consumer spending patterns. By contributing, you’ll gain exclusive access to valuable benchmarking insights at no cost, helping you track industry trends and compare performance against your peers.

The BDO HSST provides a sector-specific breakdown of retail performance:

• Fashion: Clothing, footwear, and accessories.
• Lifestyle: general household goods, gifts, health & beauty, leisure goods.
• Homewares: cookware, furniture & floor coverings, lighting, linen & textiles.
• Non-store Retail: Online sales and mail order.
  
  

Find out how your sales compare

Why the HSST Matters

• Trusted by Retailers & Analysts: Used by leading retailers to benchmark performance and make data-driven decisions.
• Essential for investors & media: Followed closely by financial analysts and the retail press to track market movements.
• Exclusive & confidential: Weekly reporting available only to contributing retailers for precise market insights.

Why join?

• It’s quick and easy – just three simple percentage figures each week, comparing revenue changes year-on-year.
• Stay informed – receive a weekly report packed with insights into spending patterns across fashion, lifestyle, and homeware.
• Confidentiality assured – all contributions are completely anonymous, ensuring your data remains secure, and we never share the names of our contributors.
• Additional weekly benchmarking data is also provided exclusively to contributing retailers.

Become a contributor

The HSST is a valuable business tool for retailers; contributors to the index receive the latest discretionary sales data and insight on a weekly basis.

As a contributing retailer, the index provides you with a number of advantages, including:

• Receiving weekly Insights to power informed decision-making
• Tracking your performance against the industry average.
• Identifying strong and weak trading periods for better forecasting.
• Enabling retailers to make faster, data-backed decisions and react in an informed way to market trends and sales fluctuations.

Become a contributor

As a contributing retailer, you’ll gain access to exclusive weekly insights on how your sales compare to industry peers. This data is not publicly available and offers a competitive advantage in understanding market trends.

Becoming a contributor

1. Submit your sales data weekly
   • Monday, email your weekly percentage change in UK turnover to BDO.
   • Figures reflect like-for-like sales performance from the same period the previous year. Example:
     1. Store fashion sales: +6.9%
     2. Non-store fashion sales: +2.3%
     3. Total store and non-store fashion sales: +4.6%
2. Confidential & secure benchmarking
   • Your data is anonymised and ranked for maximum confidentiality.
3. Receive exclusive insights every Tuesday afternoon
   • Compare your sales performance against the wider retail market.
   • Identify emerging trends, strengths, and potential risks early.

Become a contributor

For more information, to access a previous edition or to contribute to the High Street Sales Tracker, please contact highstreetsalestracker@bdo.co.uk. Find out more about our services for the retail industry.

Process

Each Monday, members email their Sales Tracker percentage for the previous week to highstreetsalestracker@bdo.co.uk. The number will reflect the percentage increase in turnover, from current outlets that were open in the comparative week in the previous year. BDO collates respondents' results and lists them in descending order of value for maximum confidentiality. Therefore, each participant is aware of their own figure and is able to benchmark their performance against their peers. We will then create an average figure for the week and circulate the results to all participants on a no-name basis.

Weekly High Street Sales Tracker Reports are received by participants every Tuesday.

A recognised market leader

With one of the largest market penetrations of the retail sector playing a leading role through advising many of the UK's retail businesses. We have strong links with the retail community in the UK and internationally allowing us to deliver the best possible service.

We provide advisory, transaction and assurance services and our partners are renowned for their commercial and pragmatic approach to solving problems.