Unsurprisingly, this news is not from the UK but from China, where the most recently published figures show the highest year-on-year growth since records began eight years ago.
Within this figure there are some startling statistics by category, with furniture up 60 per cent, cosmetics up 33 per cent and car sales up 35 per cent in the year to November.
Consumer inflation also hit a one-year high of just under 7 per cent in China last month. So clearly much of the growth is in price, not volume. Nonetheless, post-inflation growth is still huge and has been for some time.
We read often of the growing class of Chinese super-rich and their spending power leading to increasing sales of luxury brands in China. But, alongside this, the mass and middle markets are also developing at a rapid pace. China now has a clothing sector valued at more than£45 billion, behind only the US and Japan.
So what, you may think. The world’s largest population is becoming more affluent and wants more goods – it’s all rather obvious and about economics. Should UK retailers care?
Yes, they should. China’s growing consumerism means its factories can produce and sell products for the domestic market that once would have only made sense for export. And selling domestically avoids those difficult tariff and shipping problems.
Who knows how much capacity is available or can be bought on stream to cover both domestic and export growth for Chinese factories. What does seem likely is that the continued downwards trend on cost prices for UK retailers sourcing in China will at best slow and at worse reverse.
This will be exacerbated if, as may well happen, Chinese inflation continues at high levels for some time. Shifting purchasing to other low-cost economies may be possible, but India has GDP growth of more than 9 per cent and is forecast to overtake Japan in purchasing power in less than 10 years and so on.
Retail has never been easy, but now the margin growth that retailers have enjoyed for the past decade or more from Far East sourcing must be under threat – a trend that can only make things harder in the long term.
As I said at the beginning, most UK retailers would be delighted with sales growth of nearly 19 per cent and selling into an inflationary market. Developing world consumers tend to feel that international brands have a higher quality and prestige than domestic ones and are keen adopters of them.
History suggests UK retailers don’t travel well – with a few notable exceptions – but perhaps the lure of giant consumer growth should tempt them to try again.
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