Domestic online clothing and footwear retailers are experiencing strong year on year (yoy) growth, according to financial firm Wilsons.
The firm reports that the clothing and footwear category is a strong performer against its international counterparts and has witnessed 51.7% domestic yoy growth vs 2.0% international yoy growth.
The figures come as clothing and footwear retailing experiences the highs and lows of COVID-19 shopping.
According to the ABS' recent figures, the Clothing, footwear and accessory retailing experienced a strong month-on-month (mom) increase, but remains below the levels seen in May 2019.
Wilsons' data confirms this, with the firm reporting that the category remains 19.7% lower than May 2019.
Across its coverage, Wilsons reported a 147.3% lift in mom terms for clothing and footwear retailing in May.
However, as restrictions eased and retail stores began to reopen, online sales slowed slightly in May, with NAB's Online Retail Sales Index recording a 1.0% mom contraction on a seasonally adjusted basis.
But overall on a yoy basis, online sales remained strong at 50.4% in May, despite a slight contraction from the April figure of 58.4%.
According to Wilsons, the contraction in monthly online sales was driven by domestic online retailers who lost some share to international players in May, contracting by 1.2% across all online categories, while international online retailers grew by 5.1%.
However, on a yoy basis, domestic retailers remained ahead growing by 53.6%, relative to 22.5% growth across international online retailers.
Wilsons suggests that this is likely a result of shipping issues, previously impacted by China/COVID-19 de-bottlenecking.
The firm said that annual trends are indicating a shift towards online shopping.
"We highlight monthly trends may signal some normalisation in online sales growth from peak COVID-19 levels across our coverage as lockdown restrictions start to ease.
"However we believe strong annual growth trends continue to highlight a mix-shift towards online channels," the business said.