The Faraj List of Exploding Stocks Part 3.04 (FAR3)

Ding dong merrily on high street

Post-Christmas sales provide boost for Britain's retailers

Julia Finch, City editor and Faisal al Yafai
Tuesday December 28, 2004
The Guardian

Bleary-eyed bargain hunters brought a collective sigh of relief to Britain's high streets yesterday as holiday crowds compensated for a disappointing pre-Christmas sales period.

Near-record sales levels were reported around the country, with some eager shoppers queueing from the early hours. The first full shopping day after Christmas brought London's Oxford Street to a standstill and saw clear signs that the prospect of bargains was encouraging shoppers to spend again.

In Birmingham's Bullring complex, about 2,000 people queued for the start of Next's 5am sale, a scene repeated at branches of the fashion store elsewhere in the country. The Bullring centre said it expected 200,000 visitors through its doors by the end of trading yesterday.

The vast Bluewater shopping centre in Kent said it too expected a huge number of visitors: "Our record for visitors in a day is 184,000 and there is no reason why we should not get near that today, if not exceed it," said a spokesperson.

The Trafford Centre in Manchester, which also opened at 5am for the Next sale, said it expected 120,000 people to visit during its 17-hour day.

The department store group John Lewis, which is believed to have been one of the better Christmas performers, yesterday revealed a 1.2% dip in like-for-like sales in the four weeks leading up to December 23.

Gareth Thomas, the chain's director of retail operations, said: "I can't remember the last time we failed to match the previous year. But to have achieved what we did in this market is not bad going."
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Retailers are laying the blame for poor Christmas trade on this year's five interest rate rises and the end of the housing boom, which have sapped consumer confidence.

Mr Thomas said John Lewis hoped to beat its record takings for a single day - the £18m it banked on December 27 last year. "I believe we will match that," he said yesterday after receiving reports from the chain's biggest outlets.

Retailers will now be calculating exactly how they fared over the Christmas trading period and City experts are expecting there to have been distinct winners and losers.

The best results are expected to come from the supermarket giants Tesco and Asda, driven by huge sales gains from their fashion and home entertainment departments.

Some of the cornerstones of the UK high street, however, are expected to be among the worst performers. Marks & Spencer is said to have witnessed a 10% plunge in takings while Woolworths, WH Smith, Boots and House of Fraser are also said to have had a very tough Christmas.

Online retailers, meanwhile, are believed to have performed well. In the first three weeks of December, online retailers showed a 17.5% rise in trade compared with last year, with about £400m being spent. The high street saw a rise of only 2% on last year.

Yesterday Seattle-based amazon.com said it had experienced its busiest ever season with orders of up to 2.8m units per day - or 32 sales per second worldwide.