A "record" amount of online shopping was done in December 2013, says the British Retail Consortium (BRC). Whilst, early reports from the high street suggests that hardware and garden independent retailers, mostly, enjoyed good sales over the Christmas period.

Year on year figures had a 19.2% increase in internet purchases from December 2012, figures from BRC and KPMG showed. This is the fastest increase for three years, with one in five non-food products bought online.

Online trading in general represented 18.6% of total non-food sales for December 2013, which is an increase of 16.5% from December 2012. Helen Dickinson, BRC director general, said that the surge in the popularity and use of smartphones and tablets had also contributed to the growth in online trading with some shops seeing record figures through this method of trading.

Hardware independents also saw increasing figures. Ian Styles, managaing director at Axminster Tools & Machinery said, "To compare like against like we finished some 16.9% up," and explained that "last year we had a major clearance sale starting on December 24, which we didn't have need for this year. The biggest thing we noticed was an enormous rise in our website visitation." 

He said that 10% of the increased sales had come from ecommerce and the remaining 7% from the retail stores. Among the best performers were quality hand tools.

Home Hardware Southwest members also had a very successful Christmas. Martin Elliott, chief executive, said, “Our Christmas promotion went very well and that’ll be well up on previous years,” and, “the only sector that was down was fireside and heating due to the much milder weather.” And went onto explain that his members who trade online saw larger sales online than they did instore.

However, BRC figures showed that supermarkets had a less positive picture with food sales declining 0.6%. The latest set of figures from the festive trading period showed some of the UK’s biggest supermarkets suffering a decrease in sales due to the increase of competition.