The retail climate

TruckerT

Aberdeenangarse wrote: »

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.

I guess shopping is as much a social activity as an economic one!

So maybe the government needs to subsidise loss-making retail outlets in order to prevent the masses taking to civil unrest as an alternative social activity

TruckerT

[Deleted User]

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

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.....

I think people forget that its an old trick for tesco et al to have massive "price"promotions in october which fade out in november to attract custom in the run up to the silly season,sorry christmas
however it is totally correct to say that that retail trading is dire,the empty shops and the poor trading figures plus the never ending "sales"tell us that
the busiest day of the week here isnt saturdays,but thurday when theres a massive flea market

StevieJ

woodbine wrote: »

the busiest day of the week here isnt saturdays,but thurday when theres a massive flea market

Be careful with those fleas, remember what happened at Eyam :eek:

katkim

I was at the new Westfield near the Olympic park at the weekend. Lots of people there, but did comment that not a lot of people with shopping bags. I think a lot of people were being nosy like me, or just wanted to get out of the house or do a bit of window shopping/browsing and then getting it online!

alwaysbrassic

3 years ago, i was a retail manager in a ladies clothing concession in a well known department store. Throughout my 8 years there, I was allowed 210 staff hours per week, however, when I finally left my staff hours were cut to 100 per week, meaning most days I had no lunch cover (how you can provide service whilst eating a sandwich in the canteen is beyond me).
In addition to this, it was also written into my contract that the company could get me to work extra each day with no extra pay or time owed.
If my staff rang in sick (on a regular basis) I had to work 12 hour days, sometimes more 8am until 10pm. Staff rang in sick as there was no morale - how can you get a team spirit when you dont actually have enough staff to work with anyone?
Needless to say i left as soon as possible.........

reweird

Most people shop online these days so its easy to explain away the lack of shopping bags. Conversely as most people shop online these days there are numerous delivery vans and services on the roads.