Snacks, stationery sales pick up as kids return to school - Economic Times

Sales of stationery products, packaged snacks, confectionery, and shoes have picked up this month with students returning to school and college campuses — many after a gap of more than two years — in most states.

Physical reopening of educational institutions has thrown a lifeline to categories such as stationeries and school shoes that were hit hard by Covid-19 and study from home, while impulse categories like packaged snacks and confectionery have got a boost amid an overall slowdown in discretionary spending. As per industry estimates, sales growth of packaged snacks has gone up to 12-13% year-on-year in June from 7-8% during March-May. Stationery sales are inching towards pre-Covid level. Shoe sales have started picking up. Even health food drink manufacturers expect it to help recover their sales.

“There has been better traction for impulse categories like packaged snacks and confectionery from June onwards with educational institutes opening up in the East, West and South, further increasing mobility,” said B Krishna Rao, senior category head at Parle Products. “When overall FMCG sales have slowed down, this uptick in consumption of these categories has also improved the cash flow in the trade and distributors.”

The confectionery market has grown at 7-8% in June against 4-5% between March and May, industry executives said.

Educational institutes were the last to reopen physically after Covid-19 restrictions in most states in the country. Some states that had reopened schools and colleges last year were forced to shut them down again due to spike in infections. While Covid-19 cases are on the rise again, most states have not yet drawn any rules on temporary closure of classes due to infection, reflecting progression towards normalcy, industry executives said.

The overall stationery industry was severely impacted during 2020-21 and 2021-22 due to the first, second and third waves of the pandemic as well as lockdowns and restrictions. As a result, notebook consumption declined by 35% in 2020-21 and gradually recovered to 85% of pre-Covid levels in the last quarter of 2021-22, said Vikas Gupta, divisional chief executive (education and stationery products business) at

, maker of Classmate and Paperkraft brands of notebooks and stationeries.

“While the industry is expected to recover to the pre-pandemic levels during the current year, it is estimated that the current demand is around 90%-plus of pre-pandemic base, mainly on account of temporary delay in school opening as well as inflationary impact on stationery products,” he said. The impact of Covid-19 has been equally bad on the kid footwear industry, with school shoes accounting for a sizeable proportion of the category.

managing director Gunjan Shah recently told analysts that school footwear traction has started to come back. For Bata, sales of regular kid footwear and school footwear are equally split.

Health food drink makers, too, expect their business to rebound with the reopening of educational institutes.

Tarun G Arora, CEO of

, said the category had shrunk by 2% between January and May, but the industry hopes to make a turnaround to positive sales growth in the months to come with kids getting back to normal life. The company sells the Complan range of health food drinks.

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Snacks, stationery sales pick up as kids return to school - Economic Times
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