The retail climate

Going4TheDream

FTBFun wrote: »

It was very busy at Bluewater yesterday. I have a feeling you're making this up.

If shops were doing that well I am sure we wouldn't be seeing year round never ending sales?

I have recently been in Liverpool and Birmingham, both have very large modern shopping areas, and it struck me how empty the shops were despite the large numbers of people about.

Rochdale_Pioneers

Can't speak for non food other than looking at the ever-increasing numbers of empty shops.

In food retail the situation is dire:
1. Volume sales dropping in a sector which has seen growth for a long long time. Value sales just about in growth but only because of price inflation
2. Commodity prices shooting up, pushing up the component price of most foodstuffs. Manufacturers shoving through price increases just to stand still, and a lot going to the wall as they just can't make enough money to cover their overheads
3. Retailers looking at falling sales and doing their usual trick of screwing their suppliers. A request for a cheque of 2% or so of turnover if you want to keep supplying us is the usual "request". I sat through a fascinating presentation by the new sacked CEO of Co-op Food showing how their profit has risen 6x in 5 years to £310m. Co-op are one of the retailers now demanding large sums of cash as they are losing profit.
4. The portents of gloom are gathering. The IGD (industry body) think we're in retail recession which will last through to 2014-15. Several of the biggest retailers agree, and Tesco are trying to smash their competition by spending £500m on price cuts pre-Christmas (and their competitors like Morrisons made £800m last year, so its a massive investment)

My prediction is that food prices WILL go up and we're already seeing that prices are very sensitive - a rise of 5% in some categories is enough to depress sales. Its going to be a bumpy ride.....

pqrdef

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

In food retail the situation is dire:
1. Volume sales dropping in a sector which has seen growth for a long long time.

Which is odd really, because the amount we need to eat doesn't grow.

Last time I was in Tesco, half the "shoppers" were staff doing home deliveries. This is no good. If they want people to leave with twice as much as they went in for, they've got to get them into the shop.

Online shoppers don't impulse-buy. Worse, they see what they're spending before they order, and then go back and delete stuff.

Fact is, all that growth was bloat. It came from selling us stuff we didn't need, a lot of which we would end up throwing away. Tesco may now find they've over-invested in persuading us to overspend, because we aren't going to do it any more.

Other retailers will find out sooner. Women's clothes and shoes and handbags are particularly vulnerable, because most women already have enough to last them for years. This is bad news for malls and other areas that have devoted themselves to leisure shopping.

Retail parks will do better because they're more convenient for people who just want to go and buy what they need to buy.

doire_2

The high street and online are never done these days with their offers and sales. High streets with their boarded up shops. Consumer confidence still very low.

TruckerT

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

Retailers looking at falling sales and doing their usual trick of screwing their suppliers. A request for a cheque of 2% or so of turnover if you want to keep supplying us is the usual "request". I sat through a fascinating presentation by the new sacked CEO of Co-op Food showing how their profit has risen 6x in 5 years to £310m. Co-op are one of the retailers now demanding large sums of cash as they are losing profit

As I posted earlier on a different thread, the supermarkets appear to be much better at brinkmanship than the banks...

Who wants to bet that we won't soon be seeing the nation's food suppliers demanding government bailouts so that they can continue to service the economy's needs?

And, if they succeed in their demands, what guarantee would we have that they will use their bailout money in the manner intended?

TruckerT

lynzpower

Went for the first time to the all new westfield yesterday.

I havent got a lot of cash at the mo but OH wanted some new stuff so said i would go along.

Food places doing well, every table was full generally and lots of peeps hovering around to get tables. Corridors were busy but the actual shops were dead.

The only shop that could be classed as "rammed" was the apple shop where people were playing with all the stock.

Maybe one or two person out of say 50 people in view at any time had a carrier bag. We purposely looked around to see what people were leaving with ( not a lot) we bought some food from M&s but that was it.

OH felt it was expensive there and I agreed. No bargains to be had so forget it. OH saw things that were 3 or 4 pounds more in the shop than on thier own website. Forget it!

reweird

Good God don't turn this thread into a HPC inspired joke where the posters direct experience of shopping footfall indicates that there a house price crash imminent. What next? An empty cash machine means a bank run is under way.

sheffield_lad

Retail is going to be quiet for a few years to come, it's payback time, the boom years were built on debt and using tomorrows pay cheque today, I am not sure if we will ever see those days again, sure spending will return but the orgy of spending may be curtailed next time.

lynzpower

howee wrote: »

Retail is going to be quiet for a few years to come, it's payback time, the boom years were built on debt and using tomorrows pay cheque today, I am not sure if we will ever see those days again, sure spending will return but the orgy of spending may be curtailed next time.

I do wish they would stop offering me storecards though (on the very rare occasion I buy anything)

Aberdeenangarse

Funnily enough, I was in Union Square shopping centre yesterday. Seemed to be a reasonable amount of people there, but most of the shops were pretty empty.