Wrong type of weather knocks high street

Graham_Devon

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

And you did it repeatedly about the snow as well.

And the cold weather. And the ice. And the windy weather. And the south easterly gust of wind which rattled the leaves on the trees in Aberden. And the too hot, and the too muggy.

Why? Because its handed to us on a plate. Every weather so far has been the wrong weather. But this is Britain. It's never been such a big issue.

We look forward in winter to days basking in the sunshine, when spending increases and people go out and spend with their families. It come,s and we say "oh no, wrong type, bad for retailers".

This glib attitude you have to weather related impacts just makes you look a bit silly. Anyone that works in any business which sells goods or services to the public knows full well how big an impact weather can have on sales.

Even the NHS uses weather to predict big changes in demand for services, as you should know.

Might make me look silly to you. I never said it doesn't affect business. Of course it does. But not to the extent of blaming the weather for the problems we have in the country tdoay.

Never has the weather be blamed so much. No one gave a damn in 2005. They just bought. You didn't get articles telling us retailers were struggling as it was a bit overcast in Bude. This weather lark is a cover up for the true issues.

nearlynew

These seasonal variations are masking the long-term trends in retail sales.

Our "prosperity" of recent years was fake- built on rising house prices and fuelled by debt.
Take those two away and most people haven't got a pot to p1ss in.

CLAPTON

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

And if you have 10 days of summer weather in autumn, you lose a significant percentage of your sales of winter clothes for the month.

Not on the level of the weeks of snow chaos we had last year, which were a big hit to GDP, but enough to be noticeable on the retail stats.

yes I'm agreeing with you;

it seems obvious that unseasonable weather affects sales; that snow affects driving conditions, that leafs as made of some amazing chemicals that cause train wheels to skid, that power lines can collaspe under heavy icing and strong winds etc etc

these are real difficult to solve problems at an acceptable economic or environmental price.

stingey

Working in retail myself, the simple fact is NO ONE HAS ANY MONEY!!! Talking about the weather is just a smokescreen and making excuses.

michaels

Whilst I do agree that every month there is a 'reason' for disappointing economic news I would note the following:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15166108 - record cash withdrawals during the recent warm spell probably spent on beer and icecream and trips to the seaside rather than winter coats
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/8814064/John-Lewis-sales-fall-blamed-on-hot-weather.html - John Lewis saw a much worse year on year performance for the hot week than they have seen in other recent weeks. I know correlation isn't causation but JLP are generally pretty open about their sales figures.

FTBFun

Is this all of retail or just "offline"?

I'm curious whether its a long term trend towards increasing online sales, or an indication of current consumer confidence.

Dan:_4

stingey wrote: »

NO ONE HAS ANY MONEY!!!.

What a load of boll0cks. I have plenty of money thanks.

doire_2

Weather has been around since errr forever....yet its only recently they seem to churn out the same old tired excuses

DervProf

Reason for ailing property market ?

Wrong type of lending.

What we need is a strong downpour of loose lending, accompanied by a shower of media hype and ramping. Until we get that, property sales and prices are going to struggle.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Never has the weather be blamed so much. No one gave a damn in 2005..

I know you'll probably not believe this either, but in 2005 everyone in retail knew about weather impacts. They just didn't have the same abilities as today to quantify the impact.

Technology has moved on a massive amount in the last 6 years.

A friend of mine, guy I used to work with, is a senior manager for one of the large supermarket chains. In 2005 he didn't get daily weather forecasts and associated projected sales volumes broken down by category on a city by city basis. Today he does. I've seen them, and it's absolutely amazing stuff. The orders for one store can be radically different to another store just 30 miles away, purely based on weather.

The thing is though, if the weather report is dramatically wrong, which it can be, his stores can be out by several million quid over a 3 day period due to supply chain lag and needing to sell off cheap or waste a lot of products with short shelf lives.

And that's just one supermarket chain's stores in one small corner of the country.

Multiply that effect over an entire economy and it's HUGE.

So it's not that weather is being blamed more today, it's that retailers now have the ability to accurately monitor the exact impact weather has, which they just didn't have to anywhere near the same degree even 6 years ago.