2 minute read
THE WEEK IN RETAIL ISSUE 29
EDITOR’S COMMENT
IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK LIKE LOCKDOWN CHRISTMAS
Every store in the land may be decked out like Santa’s grotto already and we’ve hardly got Halloween out the way, but it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas might be the first ever locked down festive period. The direction of travel is all one way and I’d predict that it’s going to get worse before it gets better. So, bearing in mind that lockdown hasn’t been too bad for most local retailers, and purely from a sales perspective, is a lockdown Christmas good news or bad news?
This is a subject I’ve been discussing heavily over the last few days with dozens of retailers (I’m in the middle of the virtual judging for this year’s SLR Rewards), and it’s really interesting to hear what they’re saying. Broadly speaking, the predictions fall into two categories – but there is a third, less palatable category, which I’ll come to.
The first group of predictions is that Christmas will be a belter. With pubs and restaurants closed, there should be huge increases in footfall as shoppers seek out their festive tipples and treats. This is particularly pertinent in Scotland where MUP means c-stores sell alcohol at the same prices as supermarkets, so there’s little incentive for shoppers to queue up and jostle in the crowed aisles of a big box retailer when they can nip round the corner to their local store and get what they want, and it’ll probably also be chilled.
Then there’s the second group of retailers who think that, with traditional big family gatherings out the window, shoppers might choose to just do one enormous shop at Tesco or Asda or Aldi and that’ll pretty much be that.
There are obviously shades of grey in between these extremes, but it’s very difficult to plan orders and ranges and merchandising when you don’t know whether you’re facing a flood of festive shoppers or a trickle.
And yes, that third less palatable category I mentioned. A retailer who shall remain nameless but runs a store in a challenging area in Glasgow told me that Christmas “will be just like every other Christmas” for his shoppers because they are, to all intents and purposes, “completely ignoring Covid restrictions”. It’s an unpleasant thought when so many people are turning their lives upside down to comply, but it’s probably a fair point and there will be many areas where shoppers have had enough of all the rules and regulations and the constant flux.
