Trading Talk

Sunday trading laws are to be relaxed across the Olympics and Paralympics Games for a total of 8 weeks from July 22 Chancellor George Osborne announced, saying that millions of visitors will be in Britain during the main events, many of which fall on a Sunday.
Osborne commented: “We will introduce legislation limited to relaxing the [...]

The British Retail Consortium has proposed that the 1.8 per cent increase in the adult National Minimum Wage rate is a wise move that strikes the right balance between helping retailers to maintain and create jobs and supporting low income households. But freezing the youth rate will make only a marginal difference to [...]

French Connection is to launch a premium homewares range in April 2012, with a view to tapping this lucrative market segment that is thought to be worth almost £11 bn according to Verdict Research.
It is hoped the move into new markets will reverse French Connection’s dwindling fortunes that saw like-for-like sales fall 9.5% and pre-tax [...]

New data released today by money-saving site ILoveCashback.com indicates Brits will spend more on Valentine’s gifts than they did a year ago.
ILoveCashback.com surveyed 500 members during January to reveal loved-up Brits plan to spoil themselves rotten this year to ease the economic blues!
ILoveCasback is the UK’s only site to combine price comparison, voucher codes and [...]

The BRC Online Retail Monitor for Q4 2011 showed that 1 in 5 Christmas retail searches were done via mobile phones, while total retail search volumes grew 24% in the fourth quarter compared with the same quarter a year earlier.
The increase was driven by a rise in mobile/tablet search volumes, which grew by 169% year-on-year. [...]

The leaderboard produced by Skillsmart Retail, the Sector Skills Council for retail, identifies the top ten towns and cities for independent retailers based on the results of its Location Model research. As part of this research, independent retailers are mystery shopped and scored on a range of areas including product knowledge, customer service and store [...]

If the onset of 2012 brings about a search for inspiring resolutions, head over to the London Design Museum and soak in the brilliance of The Way We Live Now, a retrospective on the life and work of Sir Terence Conran. One of England’s most influential aesthetes, Conran opened his first design studio back in [...]

Logan Tod & Co.’s 6th Annual Online Future Shopping Index predicts growth of between 18% and 22% during Christmas 2012 exceeding the rate of growth in 2011.
According to the December 2011 online shopping survey of future retail trends, 26% of online shoppers are indicating that they plan to spend even more online in December 2012. [...]

This week some of the biggest names on the high street are set to publish Christmas trading statements which will shed light on how they have fared over the critical Christmas trading season.
With online sales reaching a historic high, many commentators are beginning to question the future of the high-street. [...]

NetDespatch, whose web-based software helps retailers despatch parcels for orders placed on-line, is reporting a 50 per cent  increase in online traffic compared with the same pre-Christmas period last year. Providing evidence that people are spending less in the shops and  more online, the company’s Internet servers are being accessed up to twenty  million times [...]