BRC predicts early Christmas sales
Mon, 13 Jul 2009
The UK's shops are almost certain to see early Christmas sales again this year, it has been claimed.
According to Richard Dodd, media and campaigns manager at the British Retail Consortium (BRC), the sector is likely to see a similar scenario to last year where sales start early to maximise spending over the festive period.
He was commenting after Topshop and BHS owner Sir Philip Green predicted that the final quarter of 2009 was likely to be tricky for retailers.
Sir Philip said this would be partly due to the weak pound and the reimposition of VAT at the higher rate of 17.5 per cent.
Mr Dodd commented that there is a limit to how much discounting retailers can do given the range of costs they have to deal with themselves.
He added: "The retailers who can't make those sums add up, in the end, will go out of business, and obviously quite a number have.
"There's a very, very, difficult balancing act to be done to the extent to which you can chop prices and need to meet the costs of running a business to return some sort of margin at the end of it all."
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