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Did we shop or not?

Posted in General, Media December 28th, 2006 by Arif Durrani

Confusion reigned supreme this Christmas, with all of our national press apparently unable to decide upon the deceptively easy question of whether we shopped or not.

The Evening Standard paved the way at the beginning of the month, declaring that the ‘High St faces worst Christmas for 22 years’. This was supported by numerous retail and business analysts.

The Observer too, seemed to be fairly clear on the run of events by the time Santa was warming up the reindeers on 24 December: “It’s the stay-at-home Christmas”, ran the headline.

At Selfridges, according to the report, there appeared to be more sales assistants than customers, a scenario played out throughout other stores too, apparently. So that settles it then, a quiet year for the nation’s retailers.

Perhaps not. 

Despite the lack of crowds, Selfridges said it was hoping for its biggest ‘footfall’ ever, with the number of customers trooping in during the day and evening expected to exceed more than 100,000. Signs are, it’s been a good year too for John Lewis and, it turns out, for shopping areas ranging from the Midlands to Glasgow.

In fact, any support for The Observer’s headline is eventually attributed to “the man on the Oxford Street stall selling union Jack T-shirts.”

Things didn’t get any clearer after reading any of the other papers either. The Telegraph led with headline, ‘Week before Christmas beats all forecasts for John Lewis.’ A headline in The Independent told us that ‘Last-minute £6bn shopping spree averts disaster on the high street’.

The Daily Mail avoided the confusion, preferring instead to inform us that women will spend eight years of their lives shopping.

Meanwhile, The Times ran with the theme that more money is spent in the sales immediately after Christmas than before, concluding that we had once again “embraced our selfish gene”.

You needed to turn to the fact-driven FT to get a better understanding of what really happened this year. “Christmas is heaven for some but hell for many. For UK retailers too, the festive season seems likely to widen the gap between winners and losers.

“Debenhams, the department store, said this week that like-for-like sales had worsened due to “tough trading conditions”. Woolworths has issued a profit warning. But the larger operators, such as Tesco and Marks and Spencer, seem to be enjoying buoyant trading.”