With just three shopping days left until Christmas, commercial property retailers are facing a festive rush with consumers set to snap up bargains spending £2.5m a minute in the coming week.
Commercial property retailers enjoyed their busiest weekend of the year as millions of consumers finally came out to snap up cut price deals after months of poor sales.
According to reports in The Sun, shoppers spent £3.5bn last weekend, with queues forming outside some commercial property shopping centres ahead of opening times.
However experts warned that commercial property retailers still faced an ‘austerity Christmas’.
They suggested that because so many cut-price deals had been needed to entice customers, the heavy footfall would not necessarily convert into large profits.
Around 11 million shoppers spent up to £1.5 million a minute after much of the nation left buying gifts to the last full weekend before Christmas.
Capital Shopping Centres, which owns commercial property shopping centres, including Gateshead’s Metro Centre, Manchester’s Trafford Centre and Lakeside in Thurrock, said the commercial property sites had been ‘packed’ throughout Saturday and Sunday.
Commercial property retailer John Lewis also profited from the masses of Christmas shoppers. In the week to December 17, John Lewis had the highest weekly trade the commercial property department store has ever achieved.
Sales grew by 10.6 per cent year on year to £133.1m, a 7.8% increase on last week. Online sales were up 42.2 per cent year on year.
John Lewis fashion, particularly women’s wear, saw a rise in coats and outerwear helped by the colder weather. Nightwear, lingerie and cashmere also helped drive sales. Across menswear, brands including Barbour and Joe Casley-Hayford performed well. Most shoppers were attracted by a number of bargains.
Women’s commercial property clothes store Jigsaw were offering 30 per cent party wear, while Model zone were offering half price Scalextric sets.
Others resisted the economic downward spiral to splash out on expensive items, with Selfridges reporting a surge in sales in Cartier diamond necklaces and luxury watches and Van Clef.
However, in spite of the rammed commercial property shopping centres and high streets, the Centre for Economics and Business Research forecast that sales volumes in December for UK retailers will be down 1.7 per cent compared to November and 0.3 per cent lower than a year ago. The research group also added that consumers will spend £970m less this Christmas.
Douglas McWilliams, chief executive said that consumer confidence was ‘shot to pieces’ in the middle of the economic gloom.
He commented: “Retailers are in for an austerity Christmas. Those who have left their Christmas shopping late can expect bargains aplenty both before and after Christmas Day because retailers are working hard to shift excess stock and justify town-centre overheads going forward.”
A spokeswoman for British Retail Consortium said: “This was a make or break weekend for many retailers who were hoping for a big turnout after a disappointing few months. It does appear that large numbers went to the shops and this was probably the busiest shopping weekend of the year, but it is too early yet to say whether this has translated into significant profits. Stores put on so many cut-price deals to attract consumers that profit margins will inevitably have been squeezed.”
According to figures from retail agency Retailmap, cut-price goods now occupy a quarter of high street retail space, with an average discount of more than a third off. The research was gathered from a detailed study of 23 commercial property fashion retailers.
Statistics from research group Springboard, suggested that visits to shopping centres in the week to December 14 plummeted by 6.3 per cent year on year.
In the meantime retail specialist Jonathan De Mello, from the CB Richard Ellis consultancy, warned that up to 30,000 shop staff could lose their jobs at the end of Christmas as a band of small independent commercial property retailers and some major high street names are forced to close as the banks call in heavy debts.
It is the gloomiest forecast since Christmas 2008, when the UK economy was at its worst point since the start of the recession.
Currently 15 per cent of commercial property shops in Britain are vacant. This figure is expected to rise by one per cent by the end of the festive period, he said.
This would lead to about 3,000 commercial property shops closing and between 20,000 to 30,000 workers being struck off.
Mr De Mello said: “The country is facing a High Street bloodbath immediately after Christmas which will have a devastating impact on shop workers and other businesses that supply shops. It is unlikely that retailers will survive the next rental quarter unscathed.”
He further added: “Whilst the economy is not officially back in recession as yet, we are very much in a retail recession. Whilst banks may be willing to let some of these retailers trade through Christmas, when the majority of profit is delivered for most retailers, those that struggle over the Christmas period may find the banks pulling the plug on them, and this could well include a couple of big high street names. The government needs to act soon not just to attempt to save small town centres that are potentially in terminal decline anyway, but to protect some of the larger retail chains that are clearly very vulnerable at the moment.”
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