It’s Bleak Friday for empty shops
Stores open in the early hours ... but the bargain hunters stay away
HIGH street stores might have expected to be fighting off bargainhunters at yesterday’s start of the Christmas shopping season.
Yet there was no repeat of last year’s Black Friday crushes, when crowds flooded into stores and fights even broke out as they opened at midnight or 5am.
Yesterday car parks were deserted and the relatively small queues were orderly as shoppers went online instead. The situation remained pretty much the same throughout the day.
Virtually no one, aside from the media, turned up to Boots’ flagship store on Oxford Street as its doors opened at midnight.
Elsewhere moderate crowds waited outside some Tesco Extra stores, some being offered mince pies as they stood in the rain and cold.
Bryan Roberts, of analysts Kantar Retail, said: ‘There’s been plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that Black Friday, in terms of storebased retail, has been something of a damp squib in the UK this year. It seems certain that Black Friday will largely be an online event this year.’
Shoppers at Tesco Extra in Cradley Heath, West Midlands, saw no repeat of last year’s chaos when people battled over TVs.
Only around 40 people arrived before its 5am opening and the queue was estimated to be around one tenth the size of last year’s. There was a similar scene at the Tesco Extra in Neasden, North-West London, where security guards patrolled empty car parks and aisles.
Nirmala Patel said she thought the store Tesco would be busier, but perhaps people had been put off by the crush of last year.
Pointing at the merchandise, she said: ‘Most of this looks like old stock because it’s the end of the financial year for big companies and they’re clearing stuff out.’
John Nash, from Enfield, North London, was looking for Christmas presents for his grandchildren at the Lea Valley Tesco in North London. ‘Last year was much better,’ he said. ‘This year there were fewer deals. But there were a lot of fights last time.’
The doors at the Braehead centre in Glasgow opened at 5.30am but there were only around 30 people waiting.
Lesley-Ann O’Donnell, 33, an NHS worker, waited early with her husband David, a 37-year- old lorry driver, to take advantage of the discounts.
‘It was absolutely dead. There were maybe 12 people at the most outside,’ she said. ‘People have wised up to it
‘Can’t be bothered with the fighting’
this year. I think they just can’t be bothered with the fighting.’
One shopper at the Tesco Extra in Oldham said: ‘It’s all rubbish, there was no point in coming so early for £20-£30 off a TV. We came last year and it was buzzing.’
There were punch-ups last year at Tesco in Merthyr Tydfil. This year, the police and security guards stood watch as people were allowed in 25 at a time. Bargain hunters started queueing at 3am but two hours later, when the shop opened its doors, there were just 67 people in the line.
Martin Regan, 43, of Dowlais, said: ‘We were here last year and it was chaos – there were hundreds of people and a fight broke out over a telly. It was much quieter today.’
In Belfast the streets and two main shopping centres were virtually empty in the early hours and there were no queues outside big name stores.
There were similarly quiet scenes at out- of-town parks in West Belfast where, last year, a woman suffered a suspected broken arm during a stampede for cheap televisions at Asda.