The Japan Chain Stores Association (56 firms, 9,499 stores) reported that total sales at member stores during January-June 2017 decreased by 1.5% year-on-year on a same store basis to 6,308,951 million yen.
While sales of food were comparatively vigorous, those of apparel and household goods were sluggish due to unseasonable weather, and the decreases were the greatest since the first half of 2013.
First-half 2017 apparel sales decreased by 4.1% to 533,560 million yen. The decrease was greater than the 3.6% decrease in the first half of 2016. Although apparel sales showed an improvement with the decrease being 6.3% during January-March 2017 and 2.0% during April-June, the only increase over the year before was posted in April when the category of other garments rose by 0.2%. A drop in temperature caused sales to decrease in May and June.