Austria up after nine months, Switzerland down

The development of DIY sales in Austria and Switzerland in the third quarter of 2022 was mixed. At the end of the first nine months, sales in Austria totalled 2.45 billion euros, equivalent to an increase of 2.5 per cent, according to the German industry association BHB. In the third quarter alone, Austrian DIY stores turned over around 840 million euros, 8.4 per cent more than in the same period last year.

The association found that the figures for Swiss DIY stores tended to be atypical. Total sales in the first nine months of 2022 were down by 6.6 per cent to CHF 2.86 bn (EUR 2.91 bn), with like-for-like sales down by 5.0 per cent. According to the BHB, these are also effects of lockdown phases, which, however, brought enormous growth to the Swiss retail sector in 2021; in other words, since they are time-delayed they are now causing reverse effects. Thus the figures in the third quarter look quite different again: compared to the same period last year, Swiss DIY stores increased their sales by 4.8 per cent and by 2.9 per cent on the same retail area to around CHF 900 mio (EUR 915 mio).