City stores slash prices to drum up trade

Nov 21 2008 Alex Turner, Daily Post business staff

BARGAIN-HUNTERS were out in force in Liverpool city centre yesterday as major high street retailers fought for Christmas sales.

Marks & Spencer’s 14-hour “one- day Christmas spectacular”, which offered 20% off clothing and homeware, was up against the second day of Debenhams “three- day spectacular”, which advertised up to 25% off all lines, and saw its Liverpool One store remain open until midnight.

John Lewis hit back with discounts of its own and independent Liverpool department store Lewis’s had a one-day, three- for-two offer and deployed elves around town to direct trade to the Renshaw Street store.

But the efforts to entice people to spend met with a mixed results.

Queues 100-deep formed at the till on Marks & Spencer’s menswear floor at lunchtime, as shoppers took advantage of the retailer’s biggest one-day promotion for four years.

M&S spokeswoman Clare Wilkes said: “These are really unusual times and it’s a very volatile and competitive environment, and we need to trade through it.

“We need to compete for every share of the pound that is available to be spent.”

Debenhams, which is entering its first Christmas shopping season in the city, also had shoppers snaking through the store in lines of up to 30.

The rush was reflected across the chain with the retailer forced to put up a holding page on its website after it was besieged with online customers and was instead directing shoppers to their nearest store.

In stark contrast, at the other end of Liverpool One, John Lewis had no queues at its ground floor tills when the Daily Post visited the store yesterday lunch hour.

And across the city centre, its near-namesake Lewis’s was even quieter, with shoppers sparsely spread throughout the store.

Angela Murray, marketing manager for Lewis’s, said: “Trading has been difficult up to the last couple of weeks. We have made our usual Christmas promotions more aggressive and have got a three-for-two across the store today. We need to do a lot more to encourage shoppers into the store.”

“We have run a variety of promotions recently. Some of them would have been run anyway, but it’s more widespread than it would have been.”

The activity came on the day that official sales figures from the UK high street continued to defy expectations.

Retail sales declined by 0.1% in October, during a time when consumer confidence was shaken by turmoil in financial markets, the Office for National Statistics said.

The figures were contrary to analyst expectations – many of whom had predicted a 0.9% fall – and recent British Retail Consortium (BRC) research.

The BRC said the figures failed “to convey how tough conditions are for customers and retailers”.

Stephen Robertson, director general of the BRC, said: “Given customers and retailers are being squeezed by a whole range of costs and consumer confidence at record lows, few retailers are telling me consumers are spending more.”

He added: “The boss of a leading retailer told me things haven’t been this bad since the early 1990s.”

Sales fell 0.5% in September, a decline that was also better than expected.

But analysts said the detail of yesterday’s release continued to cause alarm, with non-essential spending on items such as clothing and household goods particularly hard hit.

Against the previous month, the value of food sales rose by 1%, but in the non-food sector total sales values were down 1.2%, with household goods down 2.9% and textile, clothing and footwear showing a decline of 1.8%.

This suggests firms reduced prices in an attempt to boost sales.

Vicky Redwood, at Capital Economics, said household goods and clothing had “nosedived”.

“What’s more, anecdotal evidence suggests that the past couple of weeks have been even more shocking for retailers, as illustrated by the rash of price discounting announced this week,” she said.