Market research company GfK has revealed that strollers and baby monitors – two of the leading nursery categories – have decreased in value by 5% and 7% respectively. Client insight manager Marco Salerno takes a look at the most recent figures.
“Looking at the end of 2018, the UK economy has improved slightly, compared to the second half of last year. Economic indicators give a more positive outlook over recent months, despite consumer confidence continuing to fall from its 2015 peak. While the baby care market is linked to other figures as the declining birth rate, this downward trend in the retailing landscape hasn’t helped either, resulting in a 2% drop in value year-on-year. The market looks even worse if we isolate the last three months of 2018: value sales were down by 8%.”
This decline is common across most nursery categories, with two of the main categories, strollers and baby monitors, seeing a drop compared to last year – losing 5% and 7% of their value respectively. This can partly be attributed to the fact that the UK birth rate is currently the lowest it has been in ten years.
“For the third year in a row, the baby stroller market has seen a step decline in volume sales. Despite this, it still remains the biggest area within the nursery market and accounts for £253million in UK. The strollers segment is also the most competitive, with 90 different brands to choose from. However, the top ten brands generate three-quarters of the total category turnover.”
“In the sleep sector, demand for baby monitors has been falling since 2014. In the last 12 months, 406,000 units were sold, with sales totalling £27million. The last three months of 2018 saw a steep decline in sales, which were almost 20% less than the same period in 2017. Modern models with features such as smart connection have increased their penetration in the market and now account for the 10% of the overall category value (a 1% increase on 2017 figures) and they still have big growth potential.”
