Personal Care Products - The Dark Horse During Recession

At a time when sales of products across industries are struggling to keep up with their past records, some industries such as personal care products appear to have shown resilience despite hostile economic trends.
A look at the U.S. Department of Commerce stats show that most industries are up against some really rough weather. The whole of the industry recorded a decline of 3.1% in sales when compared to the numbers from last year. And if you consider the retail sales figures alone then December of 2008 has been pretty bad with the sales falling by 2.7% to US $343.2 billion. These numbers are pretty scary because they are worst ever since the early 1990s.
Despite the falling retail sales figures the personal care products registered a rise in sales of 5.65% to US $20.92 billion for December 2008, when compared with the December 2007 data.
Some reasons behind the rise
At the same time experts attribute the increase in sales activity for personal care products to several factors.
The first is of course the holiday season and festivities, when people spend on gifts, decorations, partying, etc. Experts think that this Christmas many people bought skin and personal care products as cheaper alternatives for more expensive gift items. Further, many retailers came up with huge and attractive discounts, which almost forced consumers to spend on personal care items. Whatever the reasons, in the end all of it did boost the sales.
World over, the performance of different retail sectors has been pretty dismal. For instance, according to the British Retail Consortium statistics the month of December 2008 has been the worst in the past 14 years, with the sales declining by 3.3 percent when compared to the activities of the previous year.
All in all the personal care industry sales in the US fared better than most other industries and also it's own kind, when pitted against the sales data from other parts of the world such as the UK.

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