Jan 18, 2010

Are shops richer or poorer?By Kirsty WigglesworthMoney.UK.MSN.com

Shops should be dropping like flies right now. If the front pages before Christmas were right, there should be a “bloodbath on the high street”.

But things don’t always work out the way headline writers would like. In fact, it was the best Christmas in eight years, according to the British Retail Consortium. Like-for-like Christmas sales were up by 4.4% in value.

Of course, retailers love the scare stories almost as much as editors. If people think shops are in trouble, they think one thing: bargains. So they run down to snap up said bargains. We fall for it every year.

Even in the good times, there were plenty of scare stories about retailers being very cautious about Christmas spending. And strangely enough, every year the figures are that bit less awful than they expect.

Gloom not lifted
This year might have been fine, so shop bosses grudgingly admit. But next year, oh next year will be tough.

More “crying wolf” from the retail industry? Maybe not. 2009 was a pretty special case. For one thing, Christmas 2008 was awful. Lehman Brothers had collapsed a couple of months before and everyone was terrified of losing their jobs. 2009 would have had to be prettyAre shops richer or poorer?

Britain might be “a nation of shopkeepers”, but with the recession still here and temperatures touching record lows, which shops did best and which did worst in the festive sales period?

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