If there was one consumer trend that emerged from the COVID pandemic it was a remarkable focus on home improvement.
When Canadians were told they couldn’t travel or attend concerts and their entertainment patterns would be curtailed, they quickly shifted the money they would have spent on an evening out or a vacation to updating their property. And that trend remained unabated through September.
TD Canada Trust, like most of the major banks, has been looking at the activity in its customer accounts and on credit and debit cards to get a feel for how consumers are behaving in these uncharted waters. Clearly, one of the big developments was our devotion to home improvement.
TD says consumers maintained that pursuit in the first three weeks of September as home centres and hardware sellers saw the second-largest year-over-year increase. Home furnishing stores were in third place so when added together this sector was seeing the most noticeable revenue gains.
And it was evident across the board as every province was posting these types of gains.
