With only a few days to go before the big day, how is festive trading panning out for retailers? PG Buzz, made a date to speak to David Pike, group managing director of Calendar Club (which is trading from 280 stores this year), while on the card front, Miles Robinson, partner of Home Counties group reveals his hopes and fears.
David Pike, group managing director of Calendar Club, says that the retailer tracks the pattern of sales dependent on what day of the week December 25 falls: “Weirdly, the last time Christmas Day was on a Monday was 2006. Looking at the sales patterns, that means today (Thursday 21December) and tomorrow (Friday 22 December) will be the biggest sales days for us on calendars.”
David said that Black Friday had “pulled sales forward” though the benefits were felt on Calendar Club’s online side rather than instore. He said that while early December was a “little quieter” than usual, he remained “confident that this can be clawed back” by the 25th.
Meanwhile, Miles Robinson, partner in House of Cards, with six stores in the Home Counties is not so sure that the final sales surge will be enough for many retailers.
“It seems as though the world has only finally realised Christmas was less than a week away! I fear we will not have time to make up for a ‘not so brilliant’ start but will only really be able to tell once we close the doors on Christmas Eve.
For us sales started later than last year, a slow mid-November combined with a dose of snow and many sales everywhere will no doubt contribute to a challenging Christmas this year on top of the amount of retail moving online.
We expect this final week to be the largest this year (usually for us it’s the week before) and should exceed last year but whether this is enough to make up for the previous weeks being down I’m not so sure. However it will hopefully still be a healthy Christmas for us.
With so many sales coming in the last week it’s difficult to be accurate on what has or hasn’t sold yet but pretty sure that boxed/charity packs will be down this year.”
