Millions of shoppers aim for sales

Dec 27 2009

Two of the UK's biggest retailers opened their stores to post-Christmas bargain hunters as figures showed a big rise in shoppers on the streets.

Rivals John Lewis and Marks & Spencer stayed shut on Boxing Day, but joined the high-street frenzy on Sunday after launching their online sales a few days earlier.

Millions of shoppers are expected to flock to cities and shopping centres up and down the country in a sign of improved confidence from a year earlier, in the worst depths of the recession. Many will also bring forward spending to beat the VAT hike on January 1.

Initial footfall figures for Boxing Day from market data firm Experian showed an big 18.5% jump in the number of shoppers compared with last year.

"Centres or retailers that didn't open this Boxing Day may be feeling that they have lost out on their share of the consumers' wallet," Experian's senior analyst Anita Sharma Manan said.

But she added: "Retailers will have been elated at this year's performance, however it remains to be seen if the takings will be enough this year to see them through this difficult period to the next quarter. With more shopping centres yet to open and key retailers launching their 'official' post-Christmas sales today there is every expectation that the remainder of the weekend could be busy."

On Saturday Selfridges enjoyed its best Boxing Day yet with a 10% rise on last year, and by 1pm menswear in the London store had taken more than £1 million. The Oxford Street branch attracted around 150,000 shoppers during the day - and thousands more at the branches in Manchester and Birmingham - with similar numbers expected today.

Stewards were employed to keep crowds under control in London, with a separate queue for customers hoping to buy Gucci at discount prices.

Staff at Lakeside shopping centre in Essex said drivers arrived as early as 5am yesterday to get to its branch of Next which opened an hour later. More than 125,000 shoppers also flooded into Bluewater Shopping Centre in Greenhithe, Kent, on the first of the three busiest days of the year for the mall.

The 12,000 car parking spaces at the Meadowhall shopping centre, near Sheffield, were virtually full by 11am with visitor numbers expected to top 100,000. And the Bullring in Birmingham saw thousands of shoppers queuing outside from 4am, with more than 9,000 passing through in the following five hours.