Snow takes the shine off high street as retailers struggle
HIGH street trade slumped in the first half of December, with last week’s snowfall capping a disappointing start to the month.
The cold weather combined with online competition and a consumer squeeze is forcing nervous retailers into heavy discounts to drive shoppers into bricksand-mortar stores.
House of Fraser is offering 50 per cent off brands such as Karen Millen, French Connection, Hobbs, LK Bennett and Dorothy Perkins. Rivals such as Debenhams and Gap were offering similar price cuts.
Shopper numbers across the UK were down by 4.9 per cent compared with the same period last year, according to figures revealed exclusively to The Mail on Sunday.
The December drop in shopper numbers compares with a 0.2 per cent rise in November, when retailers triggered big price cuts in the weeks up to Black Friday.
Analysts are increasingly concerned that retailers are creating a ‘polar effect’ with peaks in trade around Black Friday and Boxing Day – driven by big online retailers such as Amazon.
That has left the normally busy December weeks, when stores previously enjoyed their peak trading and mostly sold at full price, in decline. Springboard, which prepared the figures, said the snow meant visits to the high streets fell up to 10 per cent over most of last week. By contrast, online sales have been rising at 7 per cent this month, says data firm PCA Predict.
Springboard director Diane Wehrle said: ‘It’s the worst week to have poor weather and it really impacted on footfall across the board. On Sunday the entire shopping day was wiped out.
‘The retailers are doing themselves a bit of a disservice because they run straight into discounts the minute sales even take a slight dip. Every fashion retailer seems to be permanently on sale. So people feeling the pinch are happy to wait because they know the discounts will be coming.’