U.K. retails sales will not be exciting.
Bombs keep shoppers away
guardian.co.uk
Jill Treanor
Tuesday July 12, 2005
The Guardian
Shoppers have been staying away from central London since Thursday's terrorist attacks in "unprecedented" numbers, according to figures published yesterday.
Statistics by the SPSL agency, which counts "footfall" on the country's high streets, showed a 77% fall in numbers in the central London congestion charging zone on the day the terrorists struck and around 25% after that.
Tim Denison, director at SPSL, predicted a 20% to 30% fall for the rest of the week. He described the sustained reduction as "unprecedented". "We've been tracking [footfall] for 11 years. We haven't seen anything of these sorts of proportions, although we are surprised it's not more than it is," he said.
Translating the drop in numbers of people into sales and profits for retailers is difficult. On a typical July day, London retailers would expect takings of £280m. Yesterday the British Retail Consortium predicted £26m of losses since the bombs hit.
One retail analyst said the lower footfall, particularly on the day the bombs exploded, was not as bad as he had expected. Some leading central London retailers had indicated sales on Thursday were barely 10% of what they would normally expect, he said.
The breakdown of figures from SPSL show a 77% fall compared to the previous Thursday. By Friday this had improved to a 24.8% fall from the same day the previous week. On Saturday, the fall was just 6% on the previous Saturday, when the Live8 concerts and Wimbledon kept shoppers off the streets. On Sunday there was a 23.9% drop.
Mr Denison said the falls were less than the 50% he had anticipated based on experiences after September 11, the Madrid bombings and warnings by the government last year of possible attacks on shopping centres. The shopping centre alerts in April 2004 knocked sales for a weekend by more than 30%.
Footfall, a rival customer counter, noted that the high temperatures at the weekend may also have kept people away from the shops. Across Britain, sales were down 8% from the previous week, it said.
The British Retail Consortium said: "London has experienced attacks in the past and both retailers and consumers in the capital are doing their best to carry on as normal. The crucial factor from here is the reaction of tourists: if tourists stay away from London then we would expect the impact of attacks to be more long-term."
The BRC said its estimate of losses of £26m was based on the experiences of retailers when the Central line on the underground was closed in 2004. Losses then were £6m a day. After 9/11 it took two weeks for New York shoppers to return in their normal numbers. SPSL reported falls of 10% at the time.
Individual retailers gave a few clues to their trading over the weekend. At New Look, the privately owned fashion retailer, sales in London were down 10% compared with those outside the capital. The John Lewis Partnership would not provide numbers but said there had been a "reasonable return to something approaching normal" on Saturday.
Marks & Spencer, whose store on Edgware Road near one of the tube bombs was used as a centre to help the injured, may disclose details of its trading since the attacks in a statement due tomorrow at its annual meeting. It is expected to report sales down 5% to 9% in recent weeks. |
