"We've been very fortunate," says Luke Conod, who owns the School Uniform Shop in Hereford. "Although our retail store has been closed for over half the last 12 months, this month marks the 20th year we've been trading on the internet.
In the past couple of weeks "we've seen a 2,000% increase in our online sales of school uniforms," he said.
"The biggest sales increase has been on boys trousers, interestingly. I'm guessing that boys have shot up over the last lockdown.
"Looking at last summer, when our stores were open and our online store was open, we noticed quite a large shift, probably about 20% of our turnover from our stores to online."
However, he still thinks High Street stores will have a role to play in the future. "I firmly think with school uniforms that customers will return to the store because people need to try things on."
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Shifting patterns
Separate retail data showed a shift in demand for the "cupboard necessities" that dominated shopping habits at the start of the pandemic.
Sales of toilet roll fell 12% in the final week of February compared with last year, according to market research firm Nielsen, while demand for dry pasta fell 19% and rice and grains dropped 15%. pg slot
"We now see the tide beginning to change as British consumers look ahead to restrictions lifting," said Nielsen.
During the four weeks to 27 February, households spent £1.5bn on online grocery shopping, said Nielsen. The online share of grocery sales in the UK reached a record high of 17% over the period.
It added that 41% of British households shopped online for groceries during February, compared with 18% at the same point last year.
Total sales for online and in-store food shopping rose by 10.6% from a year earlier.