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Sandra Halliday Published
October 16, 2025
'Tis almost the season to be jolly, to buy gifts, party dresses and clothes to protect us against the cold. But things don’t seem to be working out as planned.
New figures from IMRG suggest gifting could have a tough festive season ahead of it with the gifts category online down 12.5% so far in 2025 and IMRG predicting little sign of improvement in the Golden Quarter.
And fashion may continue to struggle as it seeks to recover from a year beset by the ‘wrong’ weather during key seasons.
We looked at the figures and spoke to IMRG’s Strategy and Insight Director Andy Mulcahy to see just how tough the situation is.
September reversal
IMRG’s Online Retail Index tracks the online sales performance of over 200 retailers across the UK and while August recorded the first positive year-on-year (YoY) growth for total online revenue in 29 months, at +1.3%, September’s results shifted back to negative territory, at -3.1% YoY.
Online gifting retailers are “particularly feeling the pinch,” it said with revenue for the category down 14.1% in September, which is even worse than the weak year-to-date figure. That’s a shock at a time when gifting should be starting to take off ahead of Christmas.
At the start of the year, IMRG had forecast a 7% decline for the category but now it’s increasingly gloomy and is expecting an 11% drop in sales over the crucial Black Friday week.
That said, it added that multichannel gifting retailers, and those selling in multiple categories, are seeing more positive performance.
Online gifts bought via multichannel retailers rose 5.5% last month while online-only retailers recorded their biggest drop of the year with a 26.7% plunge. And overall traffic for specialist gifting retailers is down 17.1% year-to-date, while those selling gifting alongside other categories have seen an increase of 4.3%
With just 10 weeks to go until Christmas Day, it’s not a good position for the sector to be in. IMRG said the gifts category “has faced considerable challenges since an initial surge during the lockdowns in 2025 and, while there is some variance by tier, the overall signs are not positive”.
Meanwhile, looking at the fashion sector, that’s not in a great place either. It’s down 6% year-to-date against a forecast of 0% for the year as a whole and fell as much a 9.1% online in September.
It has clearly had a weak year online with Andy Mulcahy telling Fashionnetwork.com that “the weather has just not played ball at all (warm winter, dry spring, wet summer, 30 degrees in September etc)”.
He thinks retailers “will be quite overstocked moving in to Black Friday” with the more-than-9% fall last month being followed by a 14.9% drop in October’s first week as sunny weather kept knits, coats and boots on e-store rails and out of consumers’ baskets.
And he also thinks resale is having big impact. “I wouldn’t discount the significance of Vinted, Depop etc,” he told us. “They are posting big numbers, that second-hand market seems to be really getting going on those apps at least.”
Beauty strength
At least health & beauty is doing well though, up 1.6% in September and up 1% year-to-date against a forecast of -4% for 2025. “Retailers in that space think it’s quite recession-proof as a category as it’s relatively inexpensive and makes people feel good,” Mulcahy said. This is the second indication of the ‘lipstick effect’ (where people buy small, luxury treats that are still relatively inexpensive) really happening that we’ve seen since last week.
Back with fashion, it could be a good season for consumers with bargains a-plenty. Mulcahy thinks the issues fashion retail is facing “may be reflected in the breadth and depth of discounting promoted during November and Black Friday”.
That’s likely to be reflected in some unwelcome figures come results time for many companies as well.
And for gifting retailers, “particularly those specialists selling online-only, the economic context has stifled demand and it is difficult to see anything other than tough Christmas trading for some,” Mulcahy concluded.