It must once have seemed that, "much like the British Empire, the sun would never set on WH Smith", said Alexander Larman in The Spectator. But the skies are looking dark.

The retailer is currently in talks to sell off its portfolio of 500 UK high-street stores, meaning a brand that has existed for over 230 years may follow Debenhams and Woolworths and disappear from our streets for good.

WH Smith does plan to retain its "travel-retail" presence in airports, train stations and hospitals, the part of its business which "now accounts for more than 85% of its profit", said the BBC.

'Regrettable experience'

At the height of its popularity in the 1960s, "half the British population purchased their newspapers from WH Smith", said the Daily Mail. By the 1970s, it had become the "ultimate stationery destination", famous for "sleek interiors" and "state-of-the-art listening pods", where you could listen to (vinyl) records before buying them.

Sold by the original Smith family in the 1980s, the company went "from strength to strength", cementing its reputation as a "heavyweight in retail", and a "quintessentially British" one to boot.

So, where did it all go wrong for the chain which, against all odds, seemed to have "survived the high-street cull"?, asked The i Paper. Undoubtedly, the "shift from people shopping in-store to online" has played a part in the retailer's demise.

The "untidy" and unloved state of its stores has also been key. A recent Which? survey found WH Smith "ranked the lowest" for customer experience in a high-street shop – the "ninth year in a row" it's been placed in the "bottom two spots". Time spent in any of the brand's high-street branches is now a "regrettable experience", said Larman in The Spectator. With innovation sparse, and attempts at expansion unsuccessful, the stores are clearly "in need of a metaphorical trip to Dignitas".

'Easier, cheaper, better'

WH Smith has confirmed that talks are in progress over the sale of its high-street stores but that there is "no certainty any agreement will be reached". Consequently, the jobs of 5,000 store staff now hang in the balance. About 200 WH Smith stores also operate Post Office counters "staffed by WH Smith employees", said the BBC.

Clearly, WH Smith's future is "bleak", but we're all "part of the problem", said Mark Smith in The Herald. We "say we want the high street" but, actually, we "stay at home and scroll, scroll, scroll, because it's easier, cheaper, better". WH Smith is the "diplodocus that survived the asteroid" and "the high street is no longer as it was".

If you're counting on a last-minute rescue from a "deep-pocketed buyer" who can turn WH Smith around, "don't get your hopes up", said Larman. Just like "many other things in public life today", there is really "no reasonable hope for its revival".

If you've ever bought the same size clothing from two stores, only to find one garment fits perfectly and the other doesn't, you're not alone – shoppers are increasingly frustrated by inconsistent clothing sizes on the high street.

The problem seems to be even worse online, said Katie Rosseinsky in The Independent. "Ordering multiple sizes, crossing your fingers and hoping that one might fit has become commonplace." So why is it so hard to find clothes that fit?

'Vanity sizing' vs 'compensatory spending'

Standard sizing is a "relatively new phenomenon" that emerged from the large-scale production of army uniforms in the 19th century, said Rosseinsky. Women's fashion was slower to catch up, with the first major sizing survey for women in the UK taking place in 1952, before another set of standard, but not compulsory, garment sizes were introduced in the 1980s. 

Nowadays, however, each brand will have a "base" or "sample" size which is used to create their design prototypes, and they "won't necessarily line up with those used by others".

There are other factors at play too, such as the "plague that is 'vanity sizing'", said Shakaila Forbes-Bell in Cosmopolitan.  The practice of "altering measurements to allow customers to fit into smaller sizes" has been exploited because the positivity from us believing we are a smaller size "causes us to spend more". 

It can also work the other way around; some brands run smaller than usual. While you might think that not fitting into your regular size would "put you off", a study published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology suggested that having to size up causes "compensatory spending", which essentially means "we end up buying more to assuage our body hang-ups".

Time for 'universal sizing'?

"Erratic sizing isn't just bad for our self-esteem – it's damaging for the environment too," said The Independent's Rosseinsky. A survey from the British Fashion Council last year found that wrong sizing or fit was behind 93% of returns, which have a knock-on effect for transport-related carbon emissions.

One solution to the "sizing debacle" would be the introduction of universal sizing, said Leah Harper in The Guardian. But fashion technology expert Simeon Gill warned that shapes and distributions of bodies differ so much that it might not work. There are also the "complexities of cultural and regional variations in body types and preferences", said Shingo Tsukamoto, president of sizing technology specialist Makip.

Another option may be to go "totally bespoke" and buy far fewer clothes. If you had "five pieces of clothing tailored to your body, they would all fit", journalist and author Heather Radke told Harper. "So the answer may be something none of us is totally willing to do, which is to change our relationship with clothes and how many we have."

A serial shoplifter who made a "full-time job" out of claiming £500,000 in refunds on stolen items has refocused attention on the growing pitfalls of retail returns.

Jailing Narinder Kaur for 10 years, a judge said she had indulged in a "veritable tsunami of dishonesty", as she conned high street giants like Debenhams, John Lewis, House of Fraser and TK Maxx into refunding her for items she had stolen.

'Exposed loopholes'

Kaur, 54, was spotted on CCTV taking items from shelves to the tills as if they had been previously purchased. She would play on the goodwill of cashiers or store managers by telling them "sob stories about sick relatives", said the Kidderminster Shuttle. She defrauded retailers "all over the country" more than a thousand times between 2015 and 2019.

Describing her as "without doubt, the most dishonest person I've ever dealt with in 40 years of policing", a fraud investigator for West Mercia Police said she "exposed loopholes in till operating systems", a lot of which "have now been closed".

'Avalanche of returns'

Online returns systems are also prone to abuse. Britain is "being buried" under an "avalanche" of returned clothes thanks to Gen Z influencers, said The Telegraph. 

"Hordes" of young TikTok posters are trying on outfits for an "appreciative audience of millions". And after they "wordlessly" cycle through dress after dress, hundreds of commentators "hold forth" on which they think should be kept, and which should be sent back.

The "immensely popular" posts are commonly "racking up views in the hundreds of thousands" and are "emblematic" of how buying and returning masses of clothes is "easier than ever".

But it costs retailers "serious money" to deal with the sheer volume of clothes being returned. Asos said last year that it had suffered a £100 million hit to its profits because shoppers are buying up discounted clothes only to return most of them. UK fashion companies lost at least £7 billion due to returns in 2022, according to the British Fashion Council.

'Gone to hell'

In the face of these issues, some commentators claim that retailers are making it gradually more complicated to return products.

Amazon returns have now "gone to hell", wrote Ian Bogost in The Atlantic.  Online retailing's "blanket promise" that "you can always send it back" has become "unsustainable", so the biggest online retailers have gradually "revised, modified, and amended the logistics processes" for returns. All those "small changes" have "started to compound", so "what used to be a simple system for consumers is getting more complex".

So if the returns process "put customers off just enough to dissuade some returns", but "without upsetting the precious idea of free returns", that would be a "net benefit for retailers". An Amazon spokesperson said it would be "patently false and misguided" to claim that any of its return practices are meant to discourage returns.

'Poopy diaper'

Last month, a couple accused Amazon of "crippling their booming nappy business" when a used pair of its swimming nappies was returned and wrongly resold, The Times reported.

Paul and Rachelle Baron initially enjoyed enormous success and sales quickly grew to $1 million but they said their fortunes "took a catastrophic turn" in 2020 when a damning one-star review appeared on their Amazon storefront.

The customer complained that the nappy they ordered had arrived used and with visible stains. "Nothing could have been more disgusting!!" they wrote, alongside photographs of the soiled product. "I am assuming someone returned it after using it and the company simply did not check the item and then shipped it to us as if it was brand-new."

Within weeks, the couple received an email from another customer complaining about a dirty nappy. Amazon is responsible for inspecting returns before marking them safe for resale. The Barons spent "countless hours" on the phone with Amazon trying to get the review removed, and even tried to contact its founder, Jeff Bezos – "to no avail". Amazon told The Times that it had "improved its product return process".

But the Barons are now $600,000 in debt and their home is collateral for a loan, "which impedes them from filing for bankruptcy". Describing the last four years as "an emotional train wreck", Paul Baron said that "shoppers might think returning a poopy diaper to Amazon is a victimless way to get their money back", but "we're a small family business and this is how we pay our mortgage".

It's "shopping trolleys at dawn" for Waitrose and Marks & Spencer, the country's "most aspirational supermarkets", said columnist Xanthe Clay in The Telegraph.

Marks & Spencer is successfully chipping away at Waitrose's traditional customer base, growing its market share to 3.8% in January to match its rival for the first time, according to NielsenIQ data.

The figures are a "long way" from supermarket giant Tesco, which commands over a quarter of the market, and the rest of the so-called "big six" – Sainsbury's, Asda, Aldi, Lidl and Morrisons – which dominate the UK's grocery spend. 

But M&S and Waitrose now find themselves "scrabbling" for the same middle- and upper-class customer base: "people who can afford to spend a little more on higher welfare meat and Italian peaches, as well as (whisper it) wanting artisan loaves without the hassle of queuing at the bakers", said Clay.

Posh shoppers 'mixing and matching'

As the two posh supermarkets battle it out for well-to-do customers, it begs the question: "What is a Waitrose person? And how are they different from an M&S person?" asked Matt Rudd in The Sunday Times.

"At my Waitrose in Kent, it's bumper-to-bumper Range Rovers and shelf-to-shelf Duchy Originals. My local M&S is more electric Mini – much trickier to get the Evoque out unscratched, no boot space for corgi-food". But two towns over, it's the other way around – I'm therefore "not convinced the shop defines the shopper", said Rudd. 

Yet from this "small sample of class chatterers", two things are clear. Firstly, most people "are not swapping Waitrose directly for M&S" but "downgrading" from posher supermarkets to cheaper ones. Secondly, "they're mixing and matching", opting to do their "big shops" in cheaper stores such as Aldi, before purchasing their "cheese and canapés from M&S". 

Loyalty-scheme customers unimpressed

With food prices 25% higher than they were just two years ago, even Waitrose and M&S shoppers are "watching their wallets", agreed Clay. 

And both supermarkets are attempting to deliver value for their customers. Last October, Marks & Spencer announced price cuts on more than 200 of its products, followed by another 65 cuts at the end of January, with, the supermarket said, "an average reduction of 6%". Waitrose also started cutting prices earlier this year, unveiling a £30 million plan to lower the price of more than 200 of its own-brand products.

Yet if Waitrose wants to hold on to its spot as the top choice for middle- to upper-class customers then it may have to do more. "Clever marketing" has seen M&S become "an unlikely star" on social media platform TikTok, "where it's not hard to find influencers – from mums to students – talking about the bargains that can be found", said The Guardian. 

Waitrose has also fallen in the estimation of some long-time customers for scaling back its popular weekly personalised discount vouchers, said the Mail Online. The supermarket has changed its loyalty scheme so that the once-guaranteed weekly vouchers now only arrive from "time to time". 

Waitrose has insisted the changes have brought its programme in line with "industry standards", but long-time customers are far from impressed with the quality of the new offer: "Just wondering Waitrose why for the second week in a row my vouchers consist of a choice of a jar of olives and some seeded malted bread," tweeted one customer. "What have I done to upset you?"

The cost of bananas, which has not gone up at all in the UK in the last three decades, could now be about to fall in a controversial move made possible by Brexit.

The banana is "one of the few British supermarket staples to have bucked the trend during the cost of living crisis", said The Guardian. In fact, the price today, around 115p per kilo, is the same as it was in 1990.

The UK's banana market is dominated by the "dollar banana" producers of Latin America, who can sell their product cheaply due to rolled-over European Union-negotiated free trade deals that have significantly reduced import taxes.

In 2019, the EU promised not to cut tariffs imposed on big producers any further "in recognition of the impact on the smaller African competitors". But the UK's exit from the European Union has "freed it from that pledge to the world's poorest", said the paper.

The latest

As part of its trade deal with Andean countries – Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru – the UK government is currently conducting a review of banana tariffs. 

Afruibana, the Pan-African association of banana producers and exporters, has said the move to diverge from the EU commitment would amount to a "betrayal" by the UK. 

While it means that banana prices are likely to come down even further in UK supermarkets, it will come "at the cost of the livelihoods of thousands of workers on small plantations in some of Africa's poorest countries", said The Guardian, with potentially severe consequences for businesses in Ghana, Cameroon, and Ivory Coast. 

In the past year, the UK has granted tariff concessions on bananas to Mexico and Peru as it joined the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Another trade agreement with Australia aims to eliminate all tariffs within eight years.

The background

The UK's burgeoning banana habit has been bad news for growers for some time. When confronted by discount supermarkets such as Aldi and Lidl in the mid-1990s, Tesco, Asda and other major supermarkets "slashed the price of bananas to entice customers", said The Times.

“All major retailers except the Co-op have been selling loose bananas at unsustainably low prices, preventing any investment in social and environmental improvements by producers,” Alistair Smith, founder of Banana Link, a campaign group that champions sustainability, told the paper.

To keep prices low, bananas are grown on huge monoculture plantations, which are more susceptible to diseases such as TR4 that are "slowly destroying swathes of plantations in Asia", said The Times,

“It is the Irish potato famine phenomenon all over again," said Smith. "You could potentially get global wipeout, as there's no diversity to stop the disease taking hold." Supermarkets need to look at "alternative ways of producing on a commercial scale before it's too late", he said. 

Bananas became a symbol of excessive EU red tape during the Brexit debate after The Sun newspaper brought to light obscure EU legislation stating that bananas must be "free from malformation or abnormal curvature".

In the British media and the public imagination, the rule appeared to suggest that the EU had banned bananas that were too "bendy". Indeed, according to an Ipsos-Mori poll taken in June 2016, before the Brexit vote, 24% of British people thought bananas that are "too bendy" were banned from being imported into the UK.

How much do Britons bet?

A great deal. The UK is one of the world's biggest gambling markets, and the world's biggest online market. The industry made £14.1 billion in gross yield (profit before taxes and expenses) in the last financial year. According to the Gambling Commission, 44% of adult Britons gamble every year. And though most restrict themselves to the National Lottery or, say, a flutter on the Grand National, many do not. Official figures estimate that about 0.5% of British adults – several hundred thousand people – are problem gamblers. But the true figure may be much larger: a recent YouGov survey suggested 1.4 million people were addicted to gambling. The habit takes a heavy toll on a relatively small number of people: a quarter of gambling profits come from only 1% of betting accounts, and more than half is from the highest-spending 5% of gamblers.

What are the consequences? 

They can be grave: problem gambling is linked to an array of collateral damage including lost jobs, homes and relationships. The government estimates that it is a factor in 100 to 500 suicides every year in England. (Research from Sweden suggests that people suffering from a gambling addiction are 15 times more likely to take their own lives.) Official estimates put the direct cost to the public purse of this damage at £413 million, and the wider societal cost at £635 million to £1.356 billion. By the end of the year, there will, for instance, be 15 NHS centres in England dedicated to helping gamblers. Men are especially vulnerable to problem gambling, but there is also growing concern about the rise of gambling among under-18s: a 2022 survey found that 31% of 11- to 16-year-olds were spending their own money on gambling, and as many as 50,000 children are problem gamblers.

Why is betting so popular?

The explosion in gambling in the UK can be traced back to the 2005 Gambling Act, which was designed to promote legal, well- regulated gambling. It allowed gambling to be aggressively advertised: the industry spends about £1.5 billion a year on advertising, often during live sports broadcasts. Crucially, the act wasn't designed for the smartphone age, and betting firms have ruthlessly exploited that blind spot ever since, creating addictive online  games and offering free bets that find new customers and target problem gamblers. Excluding the National Lottery, online betting now accounts for more than 60% of industry revenues. Problem gamblers describe registering with multiple online bookies, and compulsively reaching for their phones to find the latest betting opportunities.

How is the industry regulated?

Lightly. Firms operating in Britain must have a licence issued by regulator the Gambling Commission. They can be fined or have licences removed for infractions. Since 2020, they have also had to be members of GamStop,a self-exclusion scheme for problem gamblers, and the use of credit cards for gambling has been banned. But critics say the Commission is toothless and that its £20 million annual budget is inadequate to keep a tech savvy and well-connected industry in check. Politically, all three parties promised reform in their 2019 election manifestos. And the government has already limited maximum stakes on fixed-odds betting terminals from £100 to £2. But other measures have been delayed, perhaps not unrelated to the industry's lobbying: dozens of Tory and Labour MPs took hospitality and gifts worth about £200,000 from betting firms between 2021 and 2022.

What is the government doing now?

In a white paper published in April, the government proposed the biggest shake-up of the betting industry since the 2005 act. It set out plans for recommended stake limits for online slot games (between £2 and £15, with the limit halved for under-25s). and for introducing a statutory levy on betting firms to fund addiction research and treatment. Ministers will also consult on introducing financial checks on problem gamblers: those who lose £125 or more in a month, or £500 in a year, would face a "financial vulnerability" check to establish whether they'd previously declared bankruptcy; those who lose £1,000 in a day, or £2,000 over 90 days, will undergo broader "affordability checks" against their income to establish if those losses are sustainable. The various measures proposed could cost the online industry around £800 million per year, the government estimates. 

What does the betting industry say?

The industry lobby group, the Betting and Gaming Council, broadly welcomed the white paper, but expressed fears that tighter regulation could drive punters towards a black market. It also noted that its largest members had already pledged £110 million towards reducing gambling harm over four years; and that the industry employs 110,000 people and pays £4 billion in tax per year. More broadly, some libertarians object to laws that prevent people spending their own money as they wish; and note that no other industry is required to gauge whether its clients can afford the goods and services that they pay for.

Will the reforms help?

Campaigners welcomed them, but warned that the reforms don't go far enough; some argued for a ban on free bet offers, and for monthly spending limits, as well as an advertising ban (though the Premier League has announced a ban on football clubs advertising gambling companies on their shirts from 2026). There has also been criticism of the leisurely timetable: the reforms have been delayed repeatedly since 2019 owing to changes of government; and more consultation will be carried out before changes such as stake limits are implemented. Even so, there is now cross-party support for reform; and the minister responsible, Stuart Andrew, has promised the changes will be in place by next summer.

New Labour's roll of the dice

At the time, there was great surprise that the Labour Party – historically steeped in hostility to gambling – should have pushed through the Gambling Act 2005. In theory, it recognised that gambling could not be prohibited and sought to regulate it. But it went much further than that, in line with New Labour's light-touch approach to regulation: it allowed gambling to be freely advertised, rather than just tolerated. There was uproar that the Act would authorise eight new "super casinos". In the event, eight was reduced to one, and Gordon Brown cancelled that when he became PM. Less noticed at the time was that the act also authorised online gambling in the UK for the first time. This coincided with two other changes: the launch of the iPhone in 2007, which would effectively put a 24-hour casino in every pocket; and wall-to-wall TV coverage of sport, during which advertising proliferated. Britain's gambling industry has certainly benefited. Denise Coates, born into a family that owned a small bookmaker in Stoke, took a gamble on the fledgling world of online betting to create Bet365. Today she is the richest woman in Britain, with a family wealth of nearly £9 billion. Other UK companies such as Betfred and Entain have also greatly profited.

A leading cosmetic doctor has claimed that young people have “lost the plot” when it comes to non-surgical beauty treatments such as Botox and dermal fillers.

Speaking to The Guardian, Dr Michael Prager, who has dubbed himself “the king of Botox”, said that while older patients generally sought more discreet changes to their appearance, a “visibly enhanced” look had become the trend among the under-30s, adding that young people viewed physical enhancements as a “status symbol”.

“Generally, anybody under 30 has basically lost the plot,” Prager told the newspaper. “They haven’t spent enough time in the playground and they grew up with thumbs in a crooked position in front of a screen and now that’s their life.”

‘Unregulated practitioners’

The non-surgical treatment industry has undergone “rapid growth” according to the all-party parliamentary group on beauty, aesthetics and well-being last year. Save Face, a campaigning group and national register of accredited practitioners offering non-surgical cosmetic treatments, estimated that some 900,000 Botox injections are carried out each year. And while the majority of patients who undergo cosmetic procedures are aged between 35 and 60, according to The British College of Aesthetic Medicine (BCAM), some 8% of patients were aged 18 to 24.

Speaking to The Guardian, Dr Darren McKeown, a BCAM board member, said he was concerned that the increasing number of cosmetic treatments among young people are “largely taking place in unregulated beauty salons by unqualified practitioners”.

It was concern about unregulated practitioners, in part, that prompted the government to introduce new licence requirements that make it illegal for treatments to be administered without a licence, and to ban Botox for those under 18. Before the ban, an estimated 41,000 Botox procedures a year were carried out on under-18s, according to data from the Department of Health, while some 29,300 under-18s underwent dermal filler procedures in 2017.

‘Self-esteem crisis’

It’s all too easy to “point fingers at the Kardashians or ITV’s Love Island for pushing unattainable beauty ideals onto our screens”, said Ellie Muir in The Independent. But young people are in a “self-esteem crisis” that began “raging ever since we opened our first Facebook accounts and began using photo editors like Facetune”, she wrote. And while the law may now protect those under 18, for those aged 18 and above there is little support “to tackle any deeper issues” that may be at work.

But while the “influence [of] social media” may play some part in young people seeking out cosmetic treatments, said Marc Pacifico, president of British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS), who spoke to i news, there is also “much less judgement in the under-30s about undergoing treatments”. “Perhaps the under-30s, both men and women, take more care of their appearance,” Pacifico added.

And while some people are “being overly injected and proud of it”, Prager told The Guardian, so are many of the practitioners holding the needle, who he said have “injected themselves to a point where in the old world they would have been considered nuts”.

Overall, said Prager, Botox can be a “fantastic medical useful treatment” for those looking to make a few tweaks to their appearance. But he warned: “You have to be careful who sits at the other end of the needle.”

Supermarket customers across the UK are facing limits on how many eggs they can buy amid a supply crisis that is expected to last beyond Christmas.

Marks & Spencer and Morrisons this week joined Tesco, Asda, Aldi and Lidl in rationing sales of boxes of eggs. Sainsbury’s has not limited egg purchases as yet, “but said some stores may be running low on some lines”, the BBC’s Tom Espiner reported. The chain also said it was “temporarily” sourcing eggs from Italy, despite a previous commitment to only buy from British suppliers.

Supermarkets have “blamed the shortage on a bad outbreak of avian flu”, said The Times. But “farmers disagree – strongly”, the newspaper added.

Why is there an egg shortage?

The industry’s “worst ever” bout of bird flu has resulted in around 750,000 laying hens being culled since 1 October, The Guardian reported. By comparison, around 1.8m were killed over the whole of last year.

But Jennifer Turnball, a poultry farmer in Eden Valley in Cumbria, insisted that the outbreak was not the main cause of the eggs shortages. “It is because farmers no longer have enough money to pay for their chicken feed, the energy bills for their sheds, to pay for the pullets [young hens] and higher wages for staff and to also take on the risk of avian influenza So farmers have not restocked their hens,” she told The Times.

Like many fellow producers, Turnball accused supermarkets of exacerbating the cost problems.

Demand for eggs has soared as big hikes in meat prices push consumers towards other sources of protein. Yet while egg prices have also climbed as the cost-of-living crisis bites, farmers claim supermarkets are keeping most of the extra income while they operate at a loss.

According to the British Free Range Egg Producers Association (BFREPA), the average supermarket price of a dozen eggs has risen by about 50p since the start of the year. But farmers have received an average increase of only 18p, and some “have only seen a price rise of between 5p and 10p”, said the trade body.

The Times reported that egg producers “say they need to be paid another 29p per dozen to break even this year, and 41p to make enough to reinvest in their business and make a profit”.

The shortage has been looming for some time. BFREPA warned in March that stores needed to raise egg prices and give farmers a fair cut, in order to “avert a catastrophe in the sector”. Farmers were “being hit from all sides by huge hikes” in costs, said the organisation, which reported that prices for feed were up by 50%, and energy by some 40%, along with increases to transport and labour bills.

A growing number egg producers are cracking under the strain. A recent survey by BFREPA of 163 free range producers found that 33% had either reduced chicken flock sizes, paused production temporarily or left the industry.

How long will the crisis last?

A spokesperson from BFREPA told The Guardian that while it was “very hard” to predict” how long the shortages would last, the crisis could continue “until after Christmas”.

British Egg Industry Council chair Andrew Joret said the availability of eggs should return to normal “once cost pressures ease”, but added: “We don’t know when this will be, and egg packers and producers continue to lose money.”

“We are doing everything we can to ensure that eggs are on the shelves while the industry works with retailers so that it can get back on its feet as quickly as possible,” he told the paper.

Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey told Parliament last week that the UK still had a total of 38m laying hens and that she was confident “we can get through” the eggs shortage.

A Defra spokesperson said the government was “not expecting any significant impact to the overall supply”.

Marks & Spencer has threatened to close its flagship Oxford Street store if it is not allowed to demolish and rebuild it.

The high-street retailer, which has had a difficult few years, said it was “unsustainable” to continue trading in the current Orchard House site but the demolition plan has promoted fierce opposition and a public inquiry is under way. Opponents have “urged the company to refurbish the existing buildings at 458 Oxford Street, near Marble Arch, rather than replace them”, said the BBC.

SAVE Britain’s Heritage has raised concern over the 40,000 tonnes of embodied carbon that could be released by bulldozing the buildings. The group’s petition against the scheme has attracted nearly 5,000 signatures.

In opening statements to the inquiry, Russell Harris KC, representing M&S, insisted there was “no heritage reason” why the three buildings on the site should not be demolished. He added the retailer would “not be made to trade” in the current buildings and that “it would not invest further in the site if its plans were refused”, reported Retail Gazette.

He said a demolition would allow the retail chain to bring a “new flagship store of high architectural quality” to Oxford Street, which he described as currently “failing” and has “a smell, a tangible, unmistakable expression of decline”, warning “no other retailer” would take over the site.

However, a spokesperson for SAVE told the hearing the retailer’s “threat” to leave the site “if they don’t get their way” was “not the constructive attitude of a retailer committed to the future of Oxford Street”.

The outcome of the inquiry could have wider ramifications. With high streets around the country “needing redevelopment to suit modern demands while the climate crisis intensifies”, said The Guardian, the debate over whether troubled buildings should be refurbished or redeveloped will “only become more heated”.

More than 99% of products featured in Black Friday deals cost the same or even less at other times of the year, new research suggests.

An analysis by Which? of more than 200 deals in last year's sales bonanza found that UK shoppers are “almost guaranteed not to score the cheapest price of the year by buying on Black Friday”.

A total of 40% of the products “were cheaper than their Black Friday price at other times of the year”, according to the consumer watchdog, which looked at deals by retailers including Amazon.co.uk, AO.com, Argos, Currys, John Lewis and Richer Sounds. And all but 0.5% were the same price at other times in 2020.

Although the law requires discount prices to be “genuine”, companies can use loopholes to get around the requirement. Some compare the so-called discounted price to a higher price “that the same retailer has previously charged for that product, the recommended retail price of the product set by the manufacturer, or a price charged by a rival store for the same product”, Which? explained.

But the higher price may not be “the last price the product was sold at, because there have been other prices in between”. Or a deal may not be as good as it sounds “if, when the product was sold at the higher price, another type of discount such as a multibuy was also available”.

In addition to misleading deals, consumers are being warned about outright scams around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. A campaign to raise awareness around the sale of fake goods has been launched by the National Markets Group for IP Protection (NMG).

The Journal of Trading Standards said that “traders in counterfeit goods are looking to exploit the shift to online buying by attempting to offer products which are often dangerous goods on social media platforms”.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Group, a member of the NMG, cited clothing, footwear, accessories, watches, toys, cosmetics, perfumes and electrical goods as some of the products most likely to be counterfeited and sold unlawfully at this time of year.

British shoppers were scammed out of an estimated £2.5m during the Black Friday sales period last year, reported The Guardian.

“Many never received goods they ordered from unfamiliar websites, and some were subsequently targeted by criminals using bank details given during transactions,” said the paper.

But even though many shoppers got stung, forecasters are expecting a bumper Black Friday in 2021. With research showing that consumer confidence has soared in recent months, analysts PricewaterhouseCoopers has predicted sales of more than £9bn.

• See The Week's guide to the best Black Friday deals of 2021

After a difficult 18 months on the high street, British retailers are reporting signs of recovery – just in time for their key sales period between Black Friday and Christmas.

An improvement in consumer confidence is “easing some economists’ concerns about the spending recovery”, the Financial Times reported, “despite a sharp increase in inflation over the past few months”.

The Consumer Confidence Index – a measure of the balance between economic optimism and pessimism among the British public – increased by three points this month, from minus 17 to minus 14. Analysts had expected it to fall by a point.

Joe Staton, client strategy director at data analysts GfK, which compiles the index, said the mood is finely balanced.

“Headline consumer sentiment has ticked upwards this month despite decade-high inflation,” he said. “Is this a sign that shoppers are ready to bounce back, after last year’s cancelled family gatherings, with a Christmas splurge in coming weeks? That’s how it looks, but consumers also know that when the festivities are over it’s going to be a tough year in 2022.”

Retail sales figures released today showed a 0.8% rise in sales volumes last month, after “the longest spending slump since 1996”, The Guardian reported. No growth had been recorded in the previous five months.

Toy shops and sporting goods retailer were among the companies benefiting from “a scramble to avoid disappointment amid the global supply chain disruption", the paper added. High-street stalwarts Marks & Spencer and John Lewis have both said customers are starting this year’s Christmas shopping early.

They are also expected to splash out on Black Friday, the pre-Christmas sales event which falls on 26 November. “There has been a resurgence in the number of people looking to participate in the event,” said PricewaterhouseCoopers, which predicts sales of £9bn. It found that 59% of respondents to its survey said that they plan to make a Black Friday purchase, up from 51% in 2019 and just 38% last year.

• See The Week's guide to the best Black Friday deals of 2021

1. Charlotte Tilbury magic night cream

Make-up artists rave about Charlotte Tilbury’s overnight moisturising cream, which has now been made available in refillable glass jars.

£100; charlottetilbury.com

2. Gallinée cleansing bar for face and body

There are plenty of good solid shampoo bars on the market – for those who want to cut down on plastic bottles – but remarkably few high-quality facial cleansers come in bar form. Gallinée’s no-soap bar is an exception.

£13; gallinee.com

3. Kjær Weis lengthening mascara

This refillable, organic mascara is great for a natural “you-but-better” look.

£29; naturisimo.com

4. Kiehl’s crème de corps soy milk & honey whipped body butter

The crème de corps whipped body butter is much prized by skincare enthusiasts. And it now comes in a refill pack that requires 81% less plastic than a new pot.

£38; kiehls.co.uk

5. Saint Iris Adriatica merry-berry plump

This delicious-smelling body oil, enriched with vitamins A and E, is so gentle that you can use it for your face too. The ingredients are derived from by-products of juicing and food production.

£65; siadriatica.com

With the UK going in and out of lockdowns due to Covid-19, the rate of retail store vacancies has “surged”, says Retail Gazette’s Sahar Nazir. Vacancy rates on British high streets had already been evident in the past few years due to the rise in online shopping, but this was “undoubtedly accelerated by the pandemic over the last 13 or so months”.

According to data from the British Retail Consortium, around one in seven shops in England, Scotland and Wales were empty as of March 2021, Drapers reports. Overall vacancy rates of shops increased to 14.1% in the first three months of 2021 – this was up from 13.7% in the previous quarter.

From homes to entertainment, a number of different plans have been suggested to repurpose empty shops – here we take a look at what is earmarked to save the British high street.

500,000 homes on the high street?

Last summer the government unveiled “radical and necessary” reforms to England’s planning system with Boris Johnson declaring an aim to “build, build, build” new homes, schools, hospitals, offices and shops.

Under the proposed new system, greater freedoms will be granted for buildings and land in town centres to change use without planning permission, so vacant and redundant buildings can be turned into homes.

Even before Covid, 25-40% of retail space was “no longer viable or needed”, the Centre for Policy Studies said in a report published last week. “Yet councils are doing little to ensure these vacant properties are being converted or redesignated.”

In the report the CPS argues that the “challenges of the pandemic” can be turned into an “opportunity to revive” Britain’s high streets, communities and commercial centres. It suggests that if retail space is repurposed, it could create around 500,000 homes, or more if the space were converted into flats. It would also “unleash tens of billions in private finance”.

Alex Morton, head of policy at the CPS, said: “There is a real opportunity to boost the levels of homes and encourage mixed-use regeneration as part of the current planning reforms.”

Mixed-use venues

The collapse of major retail brands such as Arcadia and Debenhams has left huge empty spaces on high streets and in commercial centres around the UK. The FT says this has “magnified a problem for landlords”: what to do with the glut of redundant retail space tainting Britain’s towns?

Many sites vacated by department stores could become mixed-use venues with some retail, a larger contingent of leisure businesses and offices on the upper floors.

One such mixed-use project has been revealed in Northern Ireland. Plans have been submitted for the long-awaited redevelopment of the former BHS shop in Belfast city centre and the 70,000 sq ft site could be developed into a mixed-use building, including retail, leisure, and the creation of a rooftop area for food and drink, the Belfast Telegraph reports.

“Town centres need to have a community hub,” Timpson chairman John Timpson told Wired, “with shops alongside medical centres, entertainment venues, restaurants and cafes – all sorts of things that people will go to”.

Entertainment and experiences

The retail property boom is “now over”, says the BBC’s Emma Simpson, and “many of our town centres will have to find a new purpose”.

One solution for ghostly town centres is “experiential leisure” companies, which are “betting on pent-up demand for social activities”, the FT says. For example the 80,000 sq ft former Debenhams store in Wandsworth has been taken over by trampoline company, Gravity, in a £4m joint venture with the landlord Landsec and investment company Invesco.

The escalators are the “only trace of the former department store which remain”, Simpson said on a visit to Gravity Southside, which opens in August. And all four floors are now being “transformed into a high-tech entertainment venue”.

According to the Gravity website there will be eight unique experiences under one roof, including e-karting, bowling, street golf and AR digital darts, at London’s “first active entertainment venue”.

“We’re creating a department store of fun,” Michael Harrison, the co-founder of Gravity, told the BBC. “We have three bars, two restaurants, go-karting, a bowling alley, huge screens to watch sporting events and adventure golf. This is the future of the high street. It’s about experience.”

“You wait 122 years for a bidder then three arrive at once,” said Bryce Elder in the FT. The UK’s fourth-biggest supermarket chain, Wm Morrison, stunned the City last weekend by recommending to shareholders a 254p-a-share takeover – valuing the enterprise at £9.5bn – from US private equity firm Fortress, backed by Koch Industries and a Canadian pension fund. Apollo Global Management, another US buyout specialist, immediately confirmed that it is working on a rival offer. And the original Yankee suitor rejected last month at 230p, Clayton Dubilier & Rice, has until 17 July to come back with an improved bid. This is a resounding “vote of confidence in UK plc”, said The Sunday Times. The sell-off might cause “shudders” to some. But the board has had “reassurance from Fortress that this is no asset-stripping operation or land grab, and that the new owners will be good stewards”. It should be warmly welcomed.

What nonsense, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. The “speed and naivety” with which the retailer’s “feeble” board approved Fortress’s bid – and believed their vague, unenforceable promises – is “deeply disturbing”. Morrisons has a special place in British life: its “unique ownership model” means it has long supply chains “stretching from farm and fishing fleet to table”. And even by the standards of private equity, the “marauding buccaneers” out to carve up the supermarket – and no doubt flog off its large property portfolio – are unsavoury. Fortress’s backer SoftBank has failed to keep the promises made when buying British chip giant Arm. Koch Industries is one of the US’s most “notorious polluting companies and a backer of eccentric far-right causes”. Apollo is tainted by links to Jeffrey Epstein. The idea that these are the right folk to take on the “rich legacy” of the socially-conscious Sir Ken Morrison is “risible”, said Ben Marlow in The Daily Telegraph. The Government must scrutinise the plan carefully; shareholders should block it.

It’s clear why Morrisons is popular, said Lex in the FT. Years of Brexit worries have left UK stocks looking cheap, and the grocer offers utility-like cash generation plus significant freehold property, logistics and manufacturing assets that should be easier to exploit under private ownership. There’s speculation a fourth or fifth bidder will emerge, said James Moore in The Independent. “And that Amazon could ultimately end up squashing the lot of them.” This makes the board’s haste in accepting the Fortress offer look idiotic. Sir Ken Morrison will certainly be spinning in his grave at the prospect of “private equity vultures” gobbling up his business. But “goodness only knows how he would respond to the limp capitulation of the people now at the helm”.

When Andy Higginson’s phone flashed up with an old colleague’s name, it was clear to the Morrisons chairman “that it wasn’t going to be a catch-up about the good old days”, said Ashley Armstrong in The Times. Sir Terry Leahy, the former Tesco boss turned partner at US private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, was delivering “a courtesy call” to alert him to a takeover bid. The £5.5bn offer (more than £8.7bn including debt) has put Britain’s fourth largest supermarket “in play”. In response, Morrisons shares “leapt by 35%” to over 240p – suggesting that investors are expecting “something tastier from the private equity outfit than its 230p sighting shot”, said Alistair Osborne in the same paper. There’s “no better place than a supermarket for a food fight. But how much of a scrap is CD&R up for?”

The attempted raid – which, if successful, would “mark one of Britain’s biggest leveraged buyouts since the 2008 crisis” – has sparked “a furious row” in the City, said the FT. Over the last “frenzied” six months, private-equity dealmakers “have announced bids for UK-listed companies at the fastest pace in more than two decades”, triggering a fierce dispute between “traditional fund managers”, who reckon they’re getting the goods far too cheaply, and “bullish dealmakers” sitting on huge pots of cash”.

Britain’s corporate boards are caught in the middle. Let’s hope the Morrisons board puts up some resistance, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. “Now that Asda has been bought via a similar leveraged model, and with takeover speculation swirling around Sainsbury’s”, 40% of the UK’s grocery market could end up under the control of financial owners – “a disaster” for “the poor old shopper”. Private equity houses don’t do price wars. “Gently rising profit margins, wrung from customers by stealth, are far better for making the debt repayments.”

This is actually “a property deal, not a retail one”, said Lex in the FT. Bradford-based Morrisons owns 85% of its 500 stores. Selling, then leasing back, just a quarter of those would raise “a quick return on investment” of £2bn. Shareholders should hold out for at least 280p. What makes the deal so significant is Morrisons’ “critical role in Britain’s food production”, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. Its 18 food production centres source mostly from British farms, and are “responsible for some 25% of the UK’s food production”. The farm lobby has “bleated endlessly about the threat of the Aussie trade deal”. They’ll have “much more to worry about” if a private equity firm, with heavy debts and no long-term responsibilities, grabs hold of Morrisons.

Yet another familiar fashion retailer is disappearing from our high streets, said Anthony Kent on The Conversation. Last week, the “once-mighty” Gap revealed that it is closing its 81 remaining UK and Ireland stores, and moving to online only sales.

Founded by two property developers in San Francisco in 1969, Gap arrived in Britain in 1987, and in the 1990s it seemed unassailable, said Anna Murphy in The Times. In that era, before Zara brought us fast fashion and turned “the British everywoman into a trends junkie”, we flocked to Gap for clothes that were affordable, well-made and “styled to last”.

In truth, the “basics” that were the brand’s signature were not dissimilar to lines at Marks & Spencer – but Gap was just that bit cooler and more on point, with shops styled “like Manhattan lofts” and beguiling marketing. The cool people in its ads may have been wearing dull chinos, but they looked as though they might be about “to write a hip-hop song or ride across Mongolia”.

Recent visitors to Gap’s stores, with their racks full of discounted clothing covered in naff logos, would be astonished to learn that the brand was once embraced by high fashion, said Lisa Armstrong in The Daily Telegraph. In 1992, Anna Wintour put ten models in white Gap shirts on the cover of Vogue. Four years later, Sharon Stone turned up to the Oscars in a black Gap turtleneck. Well into the noughties, Gap was working with top stylists and designers.

So where did it go wrong? In retrospect, the rot set in 20 years ago, when sales slumped and bean counters were brought in. Instead of investing in creativity, their strategy was based on identifying successful lines and recycling them.

But Gap’s wounds were not all self-inflicted. Any brand that defines one generation risks being rejected by the next - and when the BabyGap kids grew up, they found little in Gap that spoke to them. Gap just failed to keep up with the times, said Alys Key in The i Paper.

The high street isn’t doomed, but unless you can compete with the online giants on price (as at dirt-cheap Primark), you have to give people a compelling reason to come through your doors. Gap offered nostalgia and dated denim, and it wasn’t enough.

Tech giants Amazon and Google are being investigated by the UK’s competition watchdog over concerns they are not doing enough to prevent or remove fake reviews.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has opened a formal probe to determine if the two companies “may have broken consumer law by taking insufficient action to protect shoppers”.

If they are found to have broken consumer law, then the firms could face court action, the BBC reports. But in response both say they have resources and policies in place to stop fake reviews.

CMA chief executive Andrea Coscelli is concerned that millions of online shoppers could be “misled by reading fake reviews and then spending their money based on those recommendations”. He also says it’s “simply not fair” if some businesses can fake five-star reviews to give their products or services the most prominence, while “law-abiding businesses” lose out.

By opening its probe into Amazon and Google, the consumer champion “finally grows some teeth”, The Observer’s business leader said yesterday. “Are consumers finally getting the champion they deserve? The CMA is certainly picking bigger targets these days.”

Consumer publication Which? says the investigation is a “positive step”. Rocio Concha, who is director of policy and advocacy and chief economist at Which?, added: “We have repeatedly exposed fake reviews on websites including Amazon and Google. The CMA must now move swiftly towards establishing whether these companies have broken the law.”

‘Suspicious patterns of behaviour’

The CMA began looking at the issue of fake reviews on major platforms two years ago. In 2019 it told Facebook, Instagram and eBay to crack down, having found “troubling evidence” of a thriving marketplace for misleading online reviews, The Guardian reports.

An initial CMA investigation, which opened in May 2020, assessed several platforms’ internal systems and processes for identifying and dealing with fake reviews. Specific concerns have been raised as to whether Amazon and Google have been doing enough to “detect fake and misleading reviews or suspicious patterns of behaviour”.

“It’s important that these tech platforms take responsibility and we stand ready to take action if we find that they are not doing enough,” Coscelli said.

How fake reviews drive business

Sellers use fake and misleading reviews to improve their star ratings, The Guardian says. This can affect how prominently their company, and products, are displayed when consumers shop online.

In September last year an investigation by the Financial Times into suspicious activity on Amazon found that the company deleted approximately 20,000 product reviews, written by seven of its top 10 UK reviewers.

Users were “profiting from posting thousands of five-star ratings”, the FT said. Analysis suggested that nine of Amazon’s UK top 10 providers of ratings were engaged in suspicious behaviour.

According to a ReviewMeta study, 250m reviews were posted on Amazon in 2020, The Telegraph reports. And companies offering to write fake ones are “easy to find over the internet”.

A Which? investigation in February found that AMZTigers, a Germany-based company offering “review campaigns”, had a large army of reviewers: 62,000 across the world and 20,000 who are based in the UK. The company claims it will “help your products become best sellers”.

AMZTigers sell individual Amazon marketplace reviews for “around £13”, Which? said. Bulk packages start at £620 for 50 reviews going up to an “eye-watering £8,000 for 1,000 reviews”. This shows “how seriously sellers take reviews, and the investment they’re willing to make”.

How fake reviews have ‘become an industry’

Saoud Khalifah, chief executive of Fakespot, said “the scale of this fraud is amazing” and that Amazon UK has a “much higher percentage of fake reviews than the other platforms”.

According to a 2019 analysis by Fakespot as many as 60% of reviews for some popular Amazon products were false or unreliable. Churning out fake reviews on Amazon has “become an industry”, Fox Business reports.

Responding to the CMA investigation an Amazon spokesperson said the company devoted “significant resources to preventing fake or incentivised reviews from appearing in our store” and it will “continue to assist the CMA with its enquiries and we note its confirmation that no findings have been made against our business”.

Google’s policies state “reviews must be based on real experiences”, the BBC reports. Where violations are found the company “takes action” including disabling user accounts. In a statement Google said “we look forward to continuing our work with the CMA to share more on how our industry-leading technology and review teams work to help users find relevant and useful information”.

Companies that deliver groceries on-demand in as little as ten minutes are springing up all over the UK, and receiving millions in investment. But what might we lose by never popping out for milk again, asks Harry Wallop.

One Friday afternoon in May, Glenn Cobane, 40, who lives with his wife and two cats in Salford, did some grocery shopping: a loaf of bread, bananas, an avocado, cat food, chocolate brownies and some cans of beer. Rather than going to a nearby corner shop or walking a mile to the large Tesco Extra, he ordered from a new app called Weezy. He placed the order at 2.19pm. “I just sent the order, typed an email and then it arrived,” he says. It is 2.27pm and I’m standing on his doorstep beside the courier.

Why not pop to Costcutter, which I can see from his garden? “The app has a better selection. It has cat food and, more importantly, beer,” says Cobane, laughing, pulling out cans of Marble, a local brew you can’t get in the corner shop. “I plan to continue working from home, so I’ll be reliant on these services – it’s just a lot easier.” Cobane works in construction and orders online from Tesco or Sainsbury’s once a fortnight, but frequently runs out of fresh food or beer. “I haven’t been inside an actual supermarket since October. I’m hoping to not go back for as long as possible.” Because of Covid? “Because it’s boring, and it’s time-consuming, and, you know, I’ve been doing it for 25 years.” He shrugs. “I am embracing the future.”

At least ten different on-demand grocery companies have emerged over the last year, with names that sound like Snow White’s other dwarves: Weezy, Jiffy, Dija, Zapp, Fancy, Getir and Gorillas. All have bold, bright branding; all hire young couriers riding e-bikes, bicycles or scooters; all promise to deliver “in minutes”. They rent mini-warehouses, mostly in London, but also Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester. Established supermarkets are racing to capture the same market: both Sainsbury’s and Tesco are trialling rapid services. Despite existing for only a few months, some of the new companies have raised eye-popping sums from venture capital firms; one estimate puts investment at £9.8bn since the start of the pandemic.

One investor, Ophelia Brown at Blossom Capital, says: “We think Dija [a brand she has backed] could be worth £100bn.” (Tesco – founded in 1919 and with 4,500 stores around the world – is worth £17bn. Dija started delivering groceries in March and has 24 stores.) She is not a lone fantasist – many believe the grocery industry is about to experience a revolution; one as transformative as when the Co-operative Society opened a self-service store in London in 1948, allowing shoppers to pick their own items off the shelf, rather than wait for a grocer behind a counter.

The idea is already popular in other countries. Getir, a Turkish company now in London, has “millions of people placing orders every month” in Turkish cities since its launch in 2015, according to Turancan Salur, Getir UK’s general manager. He says: “We are democratising the right to laziness.” Partly fuelled by the pandemic, millions more now shop for food online. In February 2020, only £7.40 of every £100 spent on groceries in the UK was bought online, according to Kantar, an industry research company. By February this year, it was up to £15.40. A generation of change squeezed into a year.

“There has been significant growth from offline to online over the last one-and-a-half years,” says Kristof Van Beveren, 38, a Belgian engineer who founded Weezy with former Oxford University Boat Race winner Alec Dent, 31. “Now there is a second move from online to on-demand.” Van Beveren speaks quickly as he and Dent show me around one of Weezy’s London warehouses. Both wear pink sweatshirts branded with the company logo. “If you take European groceries, it’s a multitrillion dollar business,” Van Beveren says. Isn’t it fanciful to think he could get a significant chunk of that market? “Not at all,” he says. “Groceries are universal: everyone has to eat. Your typical tech start-up that pops up in London goes to a very small audience: early adopters, millennials. Our customers are all over, and range from 15 to 85 years old.”

Many users point out that a weekly shop requires planning. The app doesn’t. Indeed, most of our food shopping isn’t planned. Kantar estimates that 63% of all our grocery shopping is what it calls a “basket shop” – a pack of biscuits at lunchtime, or a top-up at the corner shop for milk and loo roll – rather than a big weekly trip or planned online shopping. Could these start-ups get all of that 63%? It’s highly unlikely, but, as Matt Botham, an analyst at Kantar, says, “They are betting on the lazy pound.” Dent, however, says it’s “a misconception” that the on-demand grocery business is just about selling beer and crisps to drunk people at 10pm. “In fact, 50% of what we sell is fresh.” The next step is offering recipe suggestions for people to cook from scratch.

One rival goes further in his ambition. “If I was to look back 100 years, if you wanted water, most of the households in our country needed to take the bucket and go to the local water source,” says Vladimir Kholyaznikov, who was born in Belarus and is in London to set up Jiffy. “Now, you have pipes in your flat that give you water on demand. Grocery delivery is going to duplicate that.” For now, his strategy is to target young adults with discounted ice cream using micro-influencers on Instagram. I visited his warehouse in a railway arch in Waterloo. Jiffy’s neighbour is Getir. Around the back of the arches are Dija and Zapp. “The more competitors at the beginning, the better,” says Kholyaznikov. “It educates the customer that there is this alternative.”

Currently, Jiffy has six UK stores. Other than a desk, the Waterloo one is a large chiller cabinet, a freezer and shelves stocking about 900 different items. The range will soon expand to 1,500 – the same as a small Lidl. A large supermarket has 30,000. There are eight workers in the Jiffy store: four riders wearing acid-blue tops, two pickers, a shift supervisor and the manager. When an order arrives, a horn noise is sounded from the supervisor’s computer and the order is sent to an app on the picker’s phone, telling them the shelf location of each item. They dash around with a trolley, putting the items in a paper bag, before handing it over to the e-bike riders.

Although Jiffy’s website promises “groceries in 15 minutes”, when you place an order you get an estimated delivery time, which can be more than 20 minutes if you live far from the store. Josephine Henry, 19, a student and mother of eight-month-old Jaden, lives near Victoria station. She has ordered three tubs of Ben & Jerry’s, costing £8.22. Amused at being caught buying nothing more than ice cream, she says Jiffy and Getir are often better value than a supermarket. For now, Jiffy is offering free delivery. Weezy charges £2.95, Zapp £1.99, but both offer free delivery on orders over £30. Product prices tend to be mostly in line with Tesco Express or Sainsbury’s Local, which are 8-9% more expensive than a standard Tesco or Sainsbury’s. “Early in the morning, if I don’t have the energy to go to the shop or if Jaden is being fussy and I have no one to go to the shop for me, I get it on the app. It’s just easier.”

There are many potential customers for whom popping to the local shops is difficult. Steve O’Hear, 45, has recently joined Zapp as its head of strategy. He has muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair. “For me, when you are disabled, doing things for yourself is super-empowering.” He was a big internet shopper already, but “a service that can fill the gaps between planned shopping is potentially a gamechanger”. “The purple pound is huge,” he adds, referring to disabled people’s consumer spending.

But could these apps cause a problem for shopkeepers on the struggling British high street? It’s true that over the past year local stores did well. But 20 years ago, there were more than 55,000 convenience shops in the UK; now there are fewer than 47,000. “It is a worry,” says Rav Garcha, 39, who runs five corner shops in the Midlands, started by his father. He is not against internet shopping – he started to do online deliveries from his shops during the pandemic, signing up to a platform called Appy Shop that many local shops joined. But Garcha is nervous about competition from dark stores. “At the moment they are warehouses, but what’s to stop them operating out of a garage, or a front room, or a shed? That’s what I am really worried about. It’s all just so faceless. Being a local business matters.”

Babita Sharma is author of The Corner Shop, part history of the convenience shop in Britain and part memoir about growing up in one in Reading. “Corner shops have a place in people’s hearts because there is a recognisable face behind the counter every day when you go in to buy your pint of milk.” She is not pessimistic, however. “New entrants into the market might be a threat to them initially, but it’s unlikely to be the final nail in the coffin for corner shops because they have proven to be so resilient in the past.”

In Salford, most of the riders are young. Sean Holehouse is 19, but has already worked for Amazon, a Kellogg’s factory and UberEats, which delivers restaurant food. “UberEats – you can only work when people are hungry: morning, dinner, tea. Here I’m paid by the hour.” He enjoys the cycling, he says, but mostly he likes the pay. He estimates he earned £150 a week working for UberEats, where he rode a pedal bike; now he gets to use Weezy’s e-bikes and is paid £10 an hour. “I got paid £650 for last week. The week before I got £480.” All the on-demand brands have decided to hire pickers and riders as proper employees, rather than gig-economy workers, mostly paying between £10 and £11 an hour. But how long can the companies afford to pay a premium above the supermarket industry, where entry-level jobs are at the minimum wage: £6.56 for a 19-year-old, £8.91 for those over the age of 23?

While investors keep piling in, it’s not a given that these services will make a profit. Supermarkets generate £3 or £4 of profit for every £100 they sell, and have struggled to make online deliveries profitable due to the cost of the picking, delivering, and refrigerated vans. But analysts say, as with most tech start-ups, profit is not these apps’ immediate goal: “Build big, get a lot of customers, then focus on turning a profit a few years down the line,” says Thomas Brereton at GlobalData. Dark stores are cheaper to rent than high-street premises, and on-demand customers seem to spend more per shop than they would in a convenience store. The strategy is: higher turnover per customer, lower costs per square foot.

Supermarkets are fully aware of the threat. Sainsbury’s started Chop Chop, which delivers food by bicycle within an hour for a £4.99 fee, in 2017. A few weeks ago, Tesco announced its own trial in Wolverhampton: Tesco Whoosh, with a hefty delivery charge of £5 on orders over £15, £7 on smaller ones. Most, including Waitrose, Aldi, Co-op and Morrisons, have signed up with Deliveroo, paying it an undisclosed cut of every order.

Last month I tried out the apps available in my neighbourhood in London and found most formidably slick. Dija and Weezy arrived within 11 minutes. I am impressed enough that when my children complain about going up the road to get the next day’s breakfast, and some chocolate as a reward, I tell them we’ll get it from an app. I order on Getir, which warns me it is peak Friday evening and it could take 20 minutes. It takes 52. Waiting on my street in frustration, I meet a neighbour: Greg. By chance, he has ordered beer from Getir – we are waiting for the same rider. I ask why he hadn’t walked to our corner shop, run by Raj Patel, the closest we have to a community leader. “I didn’t feel like leaving the house – it’s been a long week,” Greg laughs. “I do worry that having this level of convenience isn’t good for us,” he says. “Is it programming our brains to become really lazy?” Possibly. But that laziness could fuel multibillion-pound fortunes for those who end up winners in this race. If the fortunes are funded by supermarket shoppers switching some of their spending, few will complain. But if it puts independent corner shops out of business, that’s a different matter. Next time the kids or I want chocolate, I think we’ll be wandering down the road for a catch-up with Raj.

A longer version of this article first appeared in The Guardian. © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited

In February a study of the UK’s retail industry saw Buckinghamshire market town Beaconsfield take top spot in a ranking of 1,000 high streets and town centres. Now the worst shopping destinations in England, Scotland and Wales have also been revealed.

According to the Harper Dennis Hobbs Vitality Rankings 2021 - which determines the health of high streets and shopping centres - the Scottish town of Girvan in South Ayrshire has been named the UK’s least “healthy” retail district, i News exclusively reports.

The seaside town in south-west Scotland, which is home to around 6,500 people, “scored poorly due to a very weak retail offer [and] has a relatively high vacancy rate at 28%”, said Andy Metherell, head of retail consultancy at Harper Dennis Hobbs.

The index is based on a number of variables, including the size of retail offer, essential retail, and vacancy rate. The proportion of “low-quality” shops such as pawnbrokers and bookmakers is also factored into the study, i News adds.

Six of the ten worst areas for retail are in Wales and three are in England. Baldwin Street in Bristol was named second worst after Girvan and Chepstow in Monmouthshire was the third worst.

Ten worst retail destinations

• 1. Girvan, South Ayrshire
• 2. Bristol - Baldwin Street
• 3. Chepstow, Monmouthshire
• 4. Cardigan, Ceredigion
• 5. Southsea, Portsmouth
• 6. Tonypandy, Rhondda Cynon Taf
• 7. Ammanford, Carmarthenshire
• 8. Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire
• 9. Canning Town, east London
• 10. Newtown, Powys

UK’s best places for shopping

The “retail health” of high streets across Britain has seen contrasting fortunes since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Harper Dennis Hobbs said in its report. “The impact of Covid means the shopping destinations that would normally occupy the upper reaches of the list have fallen and have largely been replaced by more local retail centres in prosperous areas that provide convenience and essential product categories.”

In terms of the top ten best retail centres in the UK, the south east and the east of England dominate the list. Beaconsfield, in top spot, is one of many smaller, accessible, commuter-belt towns which have “outperformed city centre destinations as consumers’ shopping habits have become very localised as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic”, the report found.

Metherell said the most vital retail centres “currently provide offers that are literally vital to people’s lives, such as grocers, pharmacies and hardware stores”.

Ten best retail destinations

• 1. Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire
• 2. Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire
• 3. Tenterden, Kent
• 4. Wimbledon Village, south-west London
• 5. Marlborough, Wiltshire
• 6. Sevenoaks, Kent
• 7. Kingston upon Thames, Greater London
• 8. Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire
• 9. Harpenden, Hertfordshire
• 10. Ilkley, Bradford

Forget the start of grouse shooting in August; for Britain’s small businesses, the “Glorious Twelfth” arrived early on 12 April with the long-anticipated reopening of pubs, shops, salons and restaurants, said Jayna Rana on ThisIsMoney.co.uk. The mood was upbeat. The Federation of Small Businesses reported that confidence is at its highest level since 2014, thanks to the perceived “certainty” provided by the Government’s roadmap. After three months of “being deprived of a retail fix”, shoppers were out in force, said Larry Elliott in The Guardian. Economists say it’s “unwise to read too much into one month’s data”, let alone “one day’s footfall”, but the first signs were encouraging. Nonetheless, footfall was still down on the same day two years ago – “a long-lost time of innocence when pandemics, mass vaccination programmes and needing face masks to enter shops were the stuff of sci-fi movies”.

The pandemic-induced gaps on the high street told their own story, said The Observer. Among them are the entire Arcadia empire, Oasis and Warehouse, Cath Kidston, Thorntons and several John Lewis outlets. Poignantly, the collapsed department store chain Debenhams reopened its doors, “but only for a closing-down sale”. A similar picture looked to be forming in the hospitality trade, said Simon Read on BBC Business. Only two in five pubs in England reopened on Monday. “No pub is expecting to profit from reopening outdoors, and many will make a loss,” noted Emma McClarkin of the British Beer & Pub Association. And some 2,500 pubs are estimated to have closed for good in 2020.

Many consumer-facing businesses are banking on a “spend, spend, spend” mentality as Britons unleash their lockdown savings, said Russell Lynch in The Daily Telegraph. The “Eeyorish counterpoint” to that is grounded in behavioural economics: “we mentally create different ‘pots’ of money” and this determines our willingness to spend. “My suspicion is that savings will be treated as assets and deployed cautiously.” For my money, “a consumer upturn is not in doubt, barring unexpected Covid developments”, said David Smith in The Times. But trade and investment are also “essential ingredients for a balanced economic recovery” and recovery there is much more doubtful. With EU and world trade still depressed, “forecasters are unanimous” in expecting UK net trade (exports minus imports) to deduct from this year’s GDP growth. And the Resolution Foundation warns against expecting too much of business investment, as so many companies “have taken on too much debt”. British consumers are “a tribe you write off at your peril”, but they cannot spend us out of this pandemic on their own.

January usually marks a huge month in retail as shops sell off cut-priced stock ahead of launching spring lines. But this year it’s not the products that are for sale but rather the retailers themselves.

With non-essential outlets forced to close during Covid-19 lockdowns, total retail sales volumes fell by 1.9% in the UK in 2020 - the largest year-on-year decline since records began in 1997, according to Office for National Statistics (ONS) data.

Clothing retailers have “fared particularly badly”, says ONS deputy national statistician Jonathan Athow. The past year has seen the collapse of leading brands including department store giant Debenhams and the Arcadia Group, owner of outlets such as Topshop, Burton, Miss Selfridge and Dorothy Perkins.

However, newly emerging reports suggest shoppers may not have seen the last of Debenhams, Topshop, Topman and Miss Selfridge.

Boohoo buys Debenhams - but expect tears

Boohoo Group is shelling out £55m to buy Debenhams’ “online business” and “associated intellectual property”, the online fashion firm confirmed today. But while the acquisition includes the Debenhams brand and website, the 242-year-old chain’s 124 high-street stores are still set to close, with up to 12,000 job losses.

“Boohoo has already bought a number of high-street brands out of administration. says the BBC says. “It snapped up Oasis, Coast and Karen Millen, but not the associated stores.”

The portfolio of purchases are part of a campaign to take on Amazon as a leading player in the online retail market. Boohoo chief executive says Debenhams will operate as a digital “shop window” for his company’s brands and third party retailers, The Guardian reports.

The stock market appears confident that plan can yield good profits, with shares in Boohoo jumping by nearly 4% when the Debenhams deal was announced this morning,

Executive chair Mahmud Kamani said: “This is a transformational deal for the group, which allows us to capture the fantastic opportunity as e-commerce continues to grow. Our ambition is to create the UK’s largest marketplace.

“Our acquisition of the Debenhams brand is strategically significant as it represents a huge step which accelerates our ambition to be a leader, not just in fashion ecommerce, but in new categories including beauty, sport and homeware.”

Debenhams is expected to relaunch as an online-only brand on Boohoo’s web platform in the first quarter of 2022, the group said in a statement to investors.

Asos eyes Arcadia brands

HuffPost warned in December that the coronavirus pandemic had claimed its “biggest retail scalp so far”, as Arcadia Group collapsed into administration.

The demise of Philip Green’s empire left more than 13,000 jobs at risk as stores including Topshop, Burton, Miss Selfridge and Dorothy Perkins prepared to shut up shop for good.

But now Asos is claiming to be in “pole position” to snap up the most valuable Arcadia brands, Sky News reports.

In a statement issued today, the online fashion retailer said: “Asos plc notes recent media speculation and confirms that it is in exclusive discussions with the administrators of Arcadia over the acquisition of the Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge and HIIT brands.”

The proposed deal represents a “compelling opportunity” to buy “strong brands that resonate well with its customer base”, the statement continues.

“However, at this stage, there can be no certainty of a transaction and Asos will keep shareholders updated as appropriate.”

Continuing that more downbeat note, pundits say that major job losses are on the cards even if a purchase is agreed.

Any deal for the Arcadia brands would “likely result in all stores facing closure and redundancy for most of the 13,000 staff”, the BBC reports.

The Debenhams website has been overwhelmed by customers rushing to bag pre-Christmas bargains following the collapse of the department store chain.

In what Sky News describes as a “horror week for UK retail”, hopes of a last-ditch deal to rescue the 242-year-old firm evaporated yesterday when the last remaining bidder, JD Sports, withdrew its offer just hours after retail rival Arcadia went into administration.

Following the collapse of the talks, Debenhams - which had been in administration since April - has launched “a 70% off pre-Christmas clearance in what’s expected to be the last ever sale across its remaining 124 stores”, says the Daily Mirror.

Shoppers eager to make the most of the discounts have flocked to the chain’s website, forcing the retailer to implement a queuing system due to “exceptional demand”.

And according to the newspaper, the number of bargain hunters stuck in that “virtual queue” reached more than a million yesterday.

“We have been seeing unprecedented levels of visits,” a Debenhams spokesperson confirmed.

Social media users also provided updates after joining the line on the site, with one tweeting: “Figured I might as well go on the Debenhams website for the first time in ten years, and I’m 310,657 in the queue.”

Shoppers are snapping up discounted buys at Debenhams stores too, which like other UK retailers reopened today following the end of the four-week lockdown.

Dubbed “Wild Wednesday”, today “is set to be one of the busiest shopping days of the year as retailers return from lockdown with new 24-hour trading times in a bid to claw back the £900m lost a day as a result of Covid-19 restrictions”, says the Daily Mirror.

Some of Britain’s biggest retail brands face shutting up shop for good following confirmation that Arcadia had collapsed into administration.

The retail giant - owner of outlets such as Topshop, Burton, Miss Selfridge and Dorothy Perkins - has appointed administrators from Deloitte after sales across the group were “severely impacted” by the Covid-19 pandemic, the BBC reports.

So what does the future holds for Arcadia owner Philip Green and his brands, and for other major UK retailers?

What happened?

With consumers increasingly opting to shop online and outlets forced to close their doors as a result of coronavirus restrictions, the UK’s commercial centres have been described as “ghost towns”.

Arcadia rivals including Debenhams, Edinburgh Woollen Mill Group and Oasis Warehouse have all slid into insolvency since March. And now the pandemic has claimed its “biggest retail scalp so far”, says HuffPost.

Arcadia has 444 stores in the UK and 22 overseas, and employs more than 13,000 people, of whom 9,294 are currently on furlough.

But now all of those jobs are at risk after Sky News revealed on Friday that the group was “on the brink of going into administration following the failure of talks over a £30m loan to help offset a coronavirus cash bleed”. Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group also offered a £50m loan but was rejected.

Arcadia’s subsequent collapse marks the “worst single corporate failure of the Covid-19 crisis to date”, says the broadcaster.

Confirming the “incredibly sad” news, Arcadia chief executive officer Ian Grabiner said: “The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, including the forced closure of our stores for prolonged periods, has severely impacted on trading across all of our brands.

“Throughout this immensely challenging time our priority has been to protect jobs and preserve the financial stability of the group, in the hope that we could ride out the pandemic and come out fighting on the other side.

“Ultimately, however, in the face of the most difficult trading conditions we have ever experienced, the obstacles we encountered were far too severe.”

What about jobs, orders and pensions?

Arcadia’s staff are now “waiting to hear their fate”, Sky News says. However, bosses say that no redundancies will be announced immediately, and that stores will continue to trade and Black Friday orders will be honoured, while a buyer is sought for all or parts of the company.

Potential rescue packages aside, the collapse of Arcadia is likely to result in a cut in the value of thousands of shopworkers’ pensions.

The retail empire’s pension fund has an estimated deficit of around £350m, triggering calls from MPs and unions for Green and his wife Tina - who run and own the company respectively - to use their private fortune to “make good” the huge shortfall, The Guardian reports.

Rise and fall of Philip Green

While his company was teetering on the brink of collapse, the Croydon-born tycoon appeared “not to have a care in the world” as he was photographed soaking up the sun on his £100m superyacht in Monaco, the Daily Mail reports. Yet “the humbling of Green is one of the most spectacular downfalls in British business history”, the paper continues.

Only he, his wife and their accountants know how much the self-crowned “king of the high street” is actually worth. But one thing is certain, says The Guardian’s wealth correspondent Rupert Neate, the Greens are “far less rich than they once were”, with their estimated fortune falling from £4.9bn in 2006 to about £950m.

And the collapse of Arcadia now appears to mark a “miserable end” to Green’s “glittering retail career”, adds Sky News.

What happens next?

Arcadia executives will still control the business day-to-day, while the administration gives the firm “breathing space” from creditors such as landlords and clothing suppliers, the BBC reports.

Deloitte’s Matt Smith says administrators hope to find “one or more buyers” for the group’s businesses. After previously purchasing struggling brands such as Oasis, Warehouse, Karen Millen and Coast, fashion retailer Boohoo is seen as a potential bidder for some of Arcadia’s big-name assets.

Former Arcadia chief executive Stuart Rose told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that breaking up the empire is “the only way” forward. He predicts that other companies will “come and pick over the carcass”, but warns that not all the brands were likely to be sold.

“If you aren’t relevant, you’re probably going to die,” Rose added.

How could the collapse impact Debenhams?

The collapse of Arcadia has “prompted JD Sports to abandon its bid” to buy ailing rival department store chain Debenhams, putting a further 12,000 jobs at risk, The Telegraph reports.

Confirming the termination of the takeover talks, Geoff Rowley of FRP Advisory, joint administrator to Debenhams, said today that “all reasonable steps were taken to complete a transaction that would secure the future of Debenhams. However, the economic landscape is extremely challenging and, coupled with the uncertainty facing the UK retail industry, a viable deal could not be reached.”

As the newspaper notes, the collapse of the rescue bids for both Arcadia and Debenhams sets the stage for a fresh “bidding war that will shape the future of Britain’s ailing legacy fashion retail companies – and the high street itself”.

Shoppers will be eager to bag themselves a pre-Christmas bargain in this week’s Black Friday sales - but are the deals really as good as they look?

Not according to newly published research by Which?, which warns that Black Friday “rarely offers genuine bargains”. The consumer group says analysis of 219 home and tech products advertised as “Black Friday deals” last year shows that 85% were the “same price or less before the day”.

A “miniscule” 1% - just three of the products - were cheaper on the big day than at any other point in the six months before and after.

With this year’s event fast approaching, Which? is urging bargain hunters “to do their research”, Sky News reports. “That way you’ll know a genuine bargain when you see one,” said the consumer rights champion’s head of home products and services, Natalie Hitchins.

Here is how major retailers have responded to the investigation’s findings.

Amazon

“We seek to offer our customers great value thanks to low prices all year round as well as a number of fantastic seasonal deals events. Our Black Friday Sale is about thousands of deals on a huge selection of products from every category across the site, at a time of year when we know saving money is important to our customers. And the best thing about shopping online is that customers can easily compare prices, allowing them to make an informed purchase decision.”

AO.com

“We offer great deals for our customers all year. Last year’s Black Friday event had over 9,000 fantastic and fair offers for customers and we expect this year to be even bigger.”

Argos

“Our Black Friday event gives customers access to hundreds of products at their lowest ever price. They may also be part of sales and promotions we run the following year.”

John Lewis

“As a participating retailer in Black Friday, we offer hundreds of deals across technology, home, beauty and fashion. In addition to the variety of offers we have in store and online during the promotional period, our Never Knowingly Undersold price promise means that we continuously monitor and match the prices of our high-street competitors throughout the year. As such, we offer our customers the best value on the high street all year round, including during the Black Friday period.”

UK supermarket chains are trying to prevent a fresh spate of panic buying amid growing fears of a second national lockdown.

In a televised address on Tuesday, Boris Johnson warned that the government could not rule out another UK-wide shutdown if his latest social distancing measures fail to curb the spread of Covid-19.

Supermarket bosses are now calling for calm in a bid to avoid a repeat of the chaos seen in aisles when the first lockdown was implemented back in March, with panicked customers across the country bulk-buying toilet paper, tinned goods and other household staples.

‘Panic buying has begun’

Despite reassurances from retailers that stock is plentiful, shop shelves are already “being stripped of bleach, toilet paper and other hygiene products”, The Mirror reports.

Shopper Amit Karia shared a picture on Twitter showing another customer bulk-buying toilet rolls at a Farmfoods in Ilford.

He told the newspaper: “The woman had eight packs and will come back in later and buy eight more. The reason why she [is] carrying [them] is because there are no trolleys left. People were buying big as everyone [is] afraid of lockdown.”

Another shopper told GrimsbyLive: “People have definitely started to panic buy again. It’s ridiculous. The only reason why we had these issues last time is because people were buying too much for themselves and not leaving enough for the rest of us.

“If we just get our heads together and buy only what we need, we won’t have to worry about it, no matter whether we have a second lockdown or not.”

Customers reassured

While some shoppers are busy filling their trolleys, supermarket bosses have called for calm and insist that supply chains are operating as usual.

Dave Lewis, the outgoing chief executive of Tesco, has pleaded for customers to shop normally, adding that stockpiling was “unnecessary”.

In an interview with Ian King Live on Sky News, Lewis said: “The message would be one of reassurance. I think the UK saw how well the food industry managed last time, so there’s very good supplies of food.

“We just don’t want to see a return to unnecessary panic buying because that creates a tension in the supply chain that’s not necessary. And therefore we would just encourage customers to continue to buy as normal.”

The UK boss of Aldi, Giles Hurley, has also told customers that there is “no need to buy more than you usually would”, The Guardian reports.

In a letter to shoppers, Hurley said: “I would like to reassure you that our stores remain fully stocked and ask that you continue to shop considerately.

“We have remained open for our customers throughout the pandemic and will continue to have daily deliveries, often multiple times a day, across all of our products.”

Online is new normal

Online grocery delivery has become the norm for millions of people in the UK since the first lockdown.

Ocado’s chief executive Tim Steiner has said that the switch to internet shopping has “permanently redrawn” the retail landscape.

That claim has been backed by the findings of a survey of 2,000 people by Waitrose in August, which showed that 77% did at least some of their grocery shopping online, compared with 61% a year ago. And 60% said they shopped for groceries online more frequently since the pandemic.

The online shopping boom has seen supermarket chains scrambling to increase their delivery operations.

The Independent reports that Tesco’s online capacity had almost doubled from 600,000 weekly delivery slots in March to 1.5 million in September. The supermarket giant last month announced the creation of 16,000 new permanent roles to bolster its delivery capabilities.

As stores now prepare to face even greater demand for deliveries, Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the British Retail Consortium (BRC), has urged customers to be “considerate of others”.

“Supply chains are stronger than ever and we do not anticipate any issues in the availability of food or other goods under a future lockdown,” he said.

A boom in the popularity of cycling during the coronavirus crisis has seen summer sales surge at Halfords.

According to a newly released trading update, the car and bicycle parts company’s sales of bikes and cycling gear rose by 59.1% in the 20-week period to 21 August. And sales of electric bikes and scooters soared by 230% year-on-year.

The boom came as many other retailers struggle to survive the economic upheaval caused by the pandemic, and is “in sharp contrast” to Halford’s motoring business, which retreated 28.6%, says Cycling Industry News.

Overall group revenue rose by 7.5% during the period, with the retailer expecting pre-tax profit for the six months to the end of September to be between £35m and £40m, compared with £27.5m in the same period last year, the Financial Times reports.

As The Guardian notes, Halfords is enjoying a “purple patch” as shoppers buy new wheels and repair old bikes in order to avoid public transport or get out and about during “staycations”.

Company CEO Graham Stapleton said that bike sales had accelerated over the summer, with growth reaching 71% in August, and that electric bikes were proving increasingly popular.

“The electric bike growth has been significant,” Stapleton said. “Nearly one in three of our adult bikes are electric against just 14% last year, so the proportion we are selling has almost doubled.

“I think that’s important because with electric bikes, it is not just leisure, it is for essential use in terms of getting around and getting to work. On some of these bikes you can travel from 40 miles on one charge.”

However, while Halfords has benefited from the cycling boom during lockdown, profits are expected to fall over winter as bike demand wanes.

Stapleton said: “There is still significant uncertainty around the impact of Covid-19 and the macro-economic environment in the coming months, and as a result we are cautious on the outlook for the remainder of this year.”

Latest sales data shows that British shoppers are returning to the high street - but opinion is divided on whether the post-lockdown surge can save struggling retailers.

While some outlets are reporting strong sales growth, industry experts say that empty offices and the steep drop in commuters is having a devastating effect on many shops.

With the ongoing coronavirus crisis triggering the loss of thousands of jobs and millions of pounds of lost revenue, can town and city centres recover from one of the toughest years ever in retail?

Sales hike

Shoppers have returned to the high street “with a vengeance”, The Daily Telegraph reports.

Data from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) shows that sales last month were up by 3.9% year-on-year. August was the “third consecutive month in which sales have been more than 3% higher than in the same period of 2019, and represents the strongest rate of growth since May 2018, once distortions for the timing of Easter are accounted for,” says the newspaper.

Many shoppers have been splashing their cash on new furnishings and appliances, as families and people working from home look to upgrade their properties.

Although clothing sales are “struggling” despite children returning to school, computers and TVs are in high demand, The Telegraph adds.

Major job losses

Newly published figures obtained by the BBC under a freedom of information (FOI) reveal that British employers including retail giants Boots, John Lewis and Marks & Spencer planned a total of 300,000 redundancies in June and July.

In early August, an analysis by the Daily Mail found that at least 22,500 retail workers were facing the chop.

Return to work is ‘too late’

Confederation of British Industry (CBI) director-general Carolyn Fairbairn recently urged the government to help bring the UK’s offices “back to life” in order to prevent commercial centres from becoming “ghost towns”.

However, the BRC is warning that “the slow return of UK workers to their normal place of work will come too late to save hard-pressed city centre stores from going under”, The Guardian reports.

The retailer representative body’s chief executive, Helen Dickinson, says that a change in spending patterns, the rise in online shopping and September rent payments has left many outlets struggling to survive.

“With rents accumulating and the September quarter payment date fast approaching, many retailers are hanging on by a thread,” she said.

“Unless businesses and government can successfully persuade office workers back into city and town centres, some high-street retailers will be unable to afford their fixed costs. Government will need to act fast or September will see more shops close and more job losses realised.”

Primark bucking trend

While many firms are struggling to stay afloat, Primark is proving to be an exception.

After reopening its stores in June, the fashion chain is expecting to rake in £2bn worth of sales by the end of the year. And Primark’s owner, Associated British Foods, says the chain’s operating profits will be “at least at the top end” of previous forecasts of £300m to £350m.

Primark does not operate an online shop, and its biggest stores have seen a “significant slump in footfall amid lower numbers of tourists”, the Daily Mail’s This is Money reports. But Primark’s sales in the last quarter “have been driven by larger customer baskets, with transaction sizes initially ‘significantly higher’ than last year due to ‘pent-up demand’”, the news site adds.

John Bason, finance director at Associated British Foods, says he believes shoppers will return to city centres, although not in the same numbers as before the pandemic.

“I think society wants a number of things to become more normal and we are all working on that,” Bason said. “The city is in transition, it’s not remotely dead.”

The Lego Group has credited a steep hike in demand for the company’s toys to an increase in families “playing and learning together” during coronavirus lockdowns.

As growing numbers of grown-ups get in on the fun, in what The Guardian describes as the “rise of the kidult”, the Danish firm has recorded revenues of 15.7bn Danish kroner (£1.8bn) for the first half of 2020, a year-on-year increase of 7%. And operating profit increased by 11% to 3.9bn Danish kroner (£465.6m).

Attracting new customers of all ages was a major factor in Lego’s positive H1 results, according to the group’s CEO Niels B. Christiansen. “More families are playing and learning together with Lego bricks and we are seeing more adults than ever before enjoying building our more challenging sets,” he said.

New stores to open

Lego’s first-half results prove that it’s not all “doom and gloom” for the toy industry despite the global pandemic, with the company seeing sales rise by double-digit percentages in Asia, Western Europe and the United States, the Financial Times reports.

“We’ve done it despite Covid-19,” Lego boss Christiansen told the newspaper. “Over the last 18 to 24 months, we’ve invested behind our product portfolio, ecommerce and our brand.

“Fundamentally, this is paying off. It’s less connected to where stores are closed or there are lockdowns.”

Indeed, while the retail sector suffers from job losses and store closures, Lego is on course to open 120 new shops this year, the BBC reports.

Bricks-and-mortar stores have a “solid future”, Christiansen says, despite social distancing restrictions and a drop in footfall.

“When our stores have reopened after lockdown, there have been queues,” he told the broadcaster. “We give people the brand experience in our shops which we can’t do outside.”

Building business in China

Lego currently has 612 retail outlets around the world, including 14. Of the new stores set to open, 80 will be in China.

Along with new products such as Lego Super Mario, this year has seen the group launch Lego Monkie Kid, the first theme designed around Chinese folklore.

Across the world, theme sets including Star Wars, Disney Princess, and Harry Potter continue to be Lego’s most popular items.

Market research firm NPD told the Guardian that complex construction kits such as Lego’s Technic sets for a Bugatti and a Land Rover Defender were among the top-selling toys in the UK during the first half of 2020.

The summer holidays have only just finished but according to some of the UK’s major retailers, it’s already beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

Although the big day is still more than 16 weeks away, many “lockdown-weary” Brits are taking their minds off the coronavirus pandemic by planning for the festive season, says Sky News.

Shops are fuelling the festive fun by stocking shelves with Christmas items, with Sainsbury’s to start selling panettone and stollen from tomorrow. Asda will have mince pies for sale from Thursday, with Tesco following suit from next week.

But as the broadcaster notes, John Lewis “stole a march on all of them”, with the retailer’s online Christmas shop opening on Monday last week - ten days earlier than in 2019.

Online searches for Christmas products on the John Lewis website were already up by 370% in August compared with the same period last year.

In a statement, the group’s Christmas buyer, Jason Billings-Cray, said that “Christmas celebrations mostly take place in our homes and we have seen how the lockdown has made people think more about their homes, so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that people are already thinking about how they will decorate their homes this Christmas.

“During the lockdown, many people have spent more time outdoors and become closer to nature. From the hundreds of emails from customers asking to be alerted when specific decorations become available it looks as if animal baubles will be the most popular this year, with peacocks, squirrels and toucans topping the list of most wanted.”

Christmas-related searches are also up by 42% year-on-year on the website of Waitrose, John Lewis’s grocery division.

The number of customers looking for Christmas puddings in July and August was up by 75%, while mince pie searches rose by more than 110%.

And “searches for mincemeat are up nearly 400% as people think about making their own mince pies”, says Billings-Cray.​

Tesco has announced plans to create 16,000 permanent jobs to support the supermarket chain’s online business following “exceptional growth” during lockdown.

Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, around 9% of Tesco’s sales were online, but this has now doubled to 16%. Online customer numbers have risen from around 600,000 at the start of the outbreak to nearly 1.5 million.

And the supermarket giant is predicting online sales of more than £5.5bn in 2020 - up from £3.3bn last year.

In late April, after Tesco became the first UK retailer to fulfil a million online grocery orders in a week, CEO Dave Lewis said in a statement that “we’ve built a grocery delivery business which is probably the biggest in the world, but we know we need to do more - and we will”.

The 16,000 new job roles are in addition to 4,000 permanent jobs already created by the supermarket giant since the start of the Covid crisis. The new positions will include 10,000 pickers to assemble customer orders and 3,000 delivery drivers, plus other roles in stores and distribution centres.

A majority of the permanent jobs will be filled by staff, also known as colleagues, who joined on a temporary basis during the lockdown, with remaining vacancies to be recruited externally.

Annoucing the jobs boom, Tesco UK and Ireland’s chief executive Jason Tarry said: “Since the start of the pandemic, our colleagues have helped us to more than double our online capacity, safely serving nearly 1.5 million customers every week and prioritising vulnerable customers to ensure they get the food they need.

“These new roles will help us continue to meet online demand for the long term, and will create permanent employment opportunities for 16,000 people across the UK.”

A recent study on UK shopping habits by Waitrose suggests that the shift to online shopping will be permanent. The poll of 2,000 people across the UK found that 77% now do at least some of their grocery shopping online, compared with 61% a year ago.

Meanwhile, a report published last week by O2 said that 44% of the telecommunication company’s customers believe the pandemic will have a lasting impact on the way they shop.

Britain has turned into a nation of online shoppers since the coronavirus lockdown and the significant shift in behaviour is set to be a permanent one.

A study published by supermarket chain Waitrose has revealed that 77% of people now do at least some of their grocery shopping online, compared to 61% a year ago.

In its report, How Britain Shops Online, Waitrose polled 2,000 people and 60% said they shop for groceries online more frequently since the pandemic. Meanwhile, 41% cited convenience as the reason and one in five people said they hadn’t considered it before Covid-19.

The big change is within the over-55 age group, with numbers nearly trebling from 8% in 2019 to 23% in 2020. Last year, less than half of over-55s (47%) did some of their food shopping online and this has since increased to 74%.

In the 35-44 age group 32% now do at least one online shop a week compared to 16% in 2019.

James Bailey, Waitrose & Partners executive director, said: “Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, there are few retailers that wouldn’t have predicted the continued growth of e-commerce relative to physical shops.

“But what would have previously been a gradual upward climb in demand has - with the outbreak of Covid-19 - turned into a trajectory more reminiscent of scaling Everest.

“One in four of us now do a grocery shop online at least once a week - double the amount in 2019. Because online shopping quickly becomes habitual - these changes are irreversible.”

Permanent change

BBC News reported in July that online grocer Ocado predicted the switch to internet shopping has led to a “permanent redrawing” of the retail landscape.

Another report published this week by O2 Business and Retail Economics has backed up that statement with 44% of customers saying the pandemic will have a permanent impact on the way they shop.

Meanwhile, 47% said they will increase the number of times they shop online and 34% sourced essential and non-essential items from online retailers during lockdown.

Richard Lim, CEO of Retail Economics, said: “The impact of Covid-19 has re-wired the customer journey, leaving many retailers scrambling to assess the impact as they attempt to realign their proposition to meet a new normal.

“We’ve already witnessed a significant shift towards online and it’s inevitable that some of these behaviours will become permanent, with digital playing a much more important role. Many of these consumers are shopping for goods online for the first time, overcoming the barriers of setting up online accounts, entering payment details and gaining trust.

“The new normal will involve a step-change in the integration of digital technologies and retailers are assessing what this means for the number of stores, where they should invest and the potential partnerships that could be formed.”

The boss of Tesco says the weekly shop is back in fashion as consumers revert to making one big weekly trip to the supermarket.

Dave Lewis said Covid-19 social distancing measures mean consumers are shopping less frequently and bringing back the approach of a decade ago.

He said that although the number of transactions this month has nearly halved, the size of the average basket had doubled.

“People are shopping once a week, a little like they did 10 or 15 years ago, rather than two, three or four times a week that was happening before the crisis,” he said.

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Data from Kantar supports Lewis’ comments. The retail consultancy said households made a “record low” number of trips to the supermarket in the 12 weeks to 19 April.

“Grocery sales were £524m higher in the past four weeks than they were in April 2019, as British consumers adapted to life under lockdown,” Kantar said.

On average, it explained, households shopped only 14 times for groceries over the past month, a record low and down from 17 in pre-pandemic times.

“A drop in frequency was matched by a corresponding uplift in the amount spent on each trip to £26.02 - easily the highest figure ever recorded by Kantar and £7 greater than last year.”

Last month, Downing Street said that the recommendation members of the public should shop once a week was not official guidance.

The statement came after transport secretary Grant Shapps said people should only shop once a week to help stop the spread of coronavirus.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast, he had said: “People know the rules that have been set, try and shop just once a week. Just do the essentials, not everything else.”

A spokesperson for the prime minister later clarified that “the guidance does not specify that”.

Some big high street names will not survive the coronavirus lockdown, warns the chairman of key-cutting and repair firm Timpson.

Speaking to Radio 4, John Timpson said high streets would look “somewhat different” after the measures are relaxed.

As the 155-year-old business prepared to reopen 40 of its outlets this week, he said: “There are going to be some other names that don't come back.”

All UK stores deemed “non-essential” have been shut since Boris Johnson imposed strict measures to tackle the spread of coronavirus on 23 March.

As the BBC points out, the lockdown came at a “bad time” for the high street, which faced a consumer spending slowdown before the pandemic hit.

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The Timpson chief says staff will return to outlets based in supermarkets, which are classified as essential retailers, along with a small number of the group's high street dry-cleaning stores.

Timpson, whose family founded the business, told the Today Programme: “The most important part of this is to get the safety right."

He admitted: “Until we get there we don't know how particularly the social distancing is going to work, bearing in mind we've got a shop inside someone else's shop.”

However, the retailer will give staff face masks and install perspex screens to separate them from customers at the checkout.

Meanwhile, Greggs has also put forward plans to reopen its outlets during the coronavirus lockdown. It said it planned to reopen a small number of stores for takeaway and delivery next week.

The chief of the bakery chain has told workers of plans to open 20 stores in the Newcastle area from 4 May as part of a “controlled trial”.

As more chains examine the prospect of reopening, Burger King, Pret a Manger and KFC have already opened the doors of a small number of sites for takeaway and delivery.

Britain's pubs could remain closed until at least Christmas, in what is described as a “massive blow” to the trade.

Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove said yesterday that pubs would be among the final businesses to be given the green light to re-open following the coronavirus lockdown.

Speaking on the BBC, he was asked if the UK's 48,349 pubs would be likely to be up and running again “before winter”.

Gove said: “The other inference that I draw from your question, which is that areas of hospitality will be among the last to exit the lockdown - yes, that is true.”

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Industry figures have responded with horror. Frank Maguire from Truman’s brewery, which has traded in London since 1666, said: “Things are looking pretty dire... but I actually think pubs will reopen sooner than Christmas.”

Referring to the postponement of this summer’s football European Championships, Maguire added: “We’ve got the added blow of missing out on the Euros this year. Every England game is worth millions to the industry.”

Fears for the sector’s future were growing even before Gove’s statement. The Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) has warned that up to 50 million pints of beer would have to be thrown away as a result of pubs staying on lockdown.

Since the coronavirus lockdown began, some pub companies and breweries have decided to waive rent payments for publicans to help them through the challenging period. However, others have merely postponed the payments, pushing landlords into debt, as Sky News reports.

Trade association UK Hospitality last week warned that bars might have to start making redundancies within days unless the government wages furlough scheme is extended until July.

Debenhams is set to call in administrators after the struggling chain was forced to close all its outlets due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The retailer, which has 22,000 staff and was rescued by its lenders after collapsing into administration only one year ago, said: “This move will protect Debenhams from the threat of legal action that could have the effect of pushing the business into liquidation while its 142 UK stores remain closed in line with the government’s current advice regarding the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Boss Stefaan Vansteenkiste said “the group is making preparations to resume trading its stores once government restrictions are lifted”. However, Vansteenkiste has not said how many of its 142 shops would reopen after the lockdown.

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The company’s struggles have worsened since the coronavirus lockdown began. With more than £600 million of debt, Debenhams wrote to landlords asking for a five-month rent holiday and reportedly asked suppliers for a 31-day delay to some payments as it seeks to conserve cash.

An insider told Sky News that there was a realistic prospect that Debenhams’ clothing suppliers would take legal action against the company for deferring invoice payments during the lockdown.

The Guardian says that if Debenhams does collapse into administration it could “pave the way” for Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group, formerly known as Sports Direct, to revive its interest in the chain.

Last April, the company went into administration after lenders rejected a last-minute offer from Sports Direct to plough £150m into the chain's finances to keep it afloat.

Analysts say the latest development is not unexpected. “Debenhams has been in financial difficulties for a while so this doesn't come as a major surprise,” said Julie Palmer, regional managing partner at restructuring firm Begbies Traynor.

“But it will leave its 20,000 plus strong workforce in a precarious position who will struggle to get new employment during the on-going uncertainty.”

Industry sources have said that UK supermarkets want police support to deter unruly behaviour if London goes into lockdown to stem the spread of coronavirus.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has joined forces with Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons to urge shoppers to stop panic buying.

“However,” says Reuters, “the pleas have fallen on deaf ears, with demand increasing and stores being stripped bare of food”.

City A.M. reports that some shops have been forced to impose limits on the number of in-demand products consumers can buy, due to shortages of basic items such as pasta, soup and toilet roll.

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Although supermarket bosses insist there is no shortage of food, the BBC reports that “there are warnings that the next potential weak link in the chain is at food manufacturers”.

This problem will be exacerbated, the broadcaster notes, as “staff absences... mark the beginning of a new and potentially serious supply chain problem”.

Andrew Opie, from the British Retail Consortium, the industry body representing supermarkets, told Sky News: “Retailers across the country are working closely with police and other partners to keep retail sites running as smoothly as possible.

“It is vital that police forces prioritise the safety of those who are working to meet the needs of an entire country,” Opie said.

He added that “anyone found to be abusing staff or customers should be met with the full force of the law”.

A spokesman for the National Police Chiefs Council said no national decision had been made on providing staffing at supermarkets. “We do not expect food shortages or looting. In fact, the experience of other countries suggest this is highly unlikely to be an issue,” they said.

After rumours that the army may also be called in to maintain order, a spokesperson for the prime minister moved to play down the claims, saying: “Maintenance of public order is the responsibility of the police, and there are no plans to use military personnel for public order during the coronavirus pandemic.”

In Australia, police have been called up to supervise long queues at grocery stores, with shoppers rushing to get their hands on what’s left on the shelves, according to the Daily Mail.

Tesco has begun restricting sales of essential food and household items amid growing reports of stockpiling and panic buying because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Customers will be limited to buying no more than five of certain products, including antibacterial gels, dry pasta, long-life milk and some tinned vegetables.

The UK’s largest grocer said some individual stores may have introduced their own restrictions, with “branch managers making a judgement at a localised level”.

Asda and Boots are restricting hand sanitiser to two bottles per person. Waitrose and Sainsbury’s have yet to put a cap on any of their products in stores.

Ocado, the online grocer, was rationing toilet rolls on Sunday evening, with customers able to buy no more than two 12-roll packs of Andrex.

A Retail Economics survey reported by the BBC found that as many as 10% of UK consumers are stockpiling, and social is awash with photographs, videos and reports of panic buying and empty shelves. The Daily Mail says photos from one Asda store in London showed aisles that had been “stripped of toilet roll”.

The Guardian says the panic began after Public Health England urged members of the public to “plan ahead” in case they had to self-isolate for a couple of weeks.

However, the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, insists there is “absolutely no reason” for the British public to resort to panic buying. Boris Johnson said on Sunday: “We’ve had no advice from the scientific advisers or medical officers that there’s any need for people to buy stuff in.”

Dr Andrew Potter, chair in logistics and transport at Cardiff Business School, said the problems might be short-lived.

“Whilst there might be empty shelves at the moment in the shops, over the next week or so, we will see them replenish,” he said. “The supply chain will start to deliver stuff through to the stores and hopefully this shortage - which is fairly short-term - will clear and everything will be back to normal again.”

The environment secretary, George Eustice, is set to meet food industry representatives later today.

A Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokesperson said: “The environment secretary will hold a further call with chief executives from the UK’s leading supermarkets and industry representatives on 9 March to discuss their response to the coronavirus. The meeting will discuss support for vulnerable groups who may be in isolation.”

Last week, supermarkets rehearsed various coronavirus scenarios, with “feed the nation” plans being drawn up by major chains.

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Tesco is to cut more than 1,800 jobs in its in-store bakeries, blaming lower demand for traditional loaves of bread.

Announcing the news, the supermarket chain said that although no bakery counters will close completely, hundreds of its outlets would slash the amount of baking done on site.

Some 1,816 staff will be at risk of redundancy when the changes take place starting in May, though bosses have promised to try to find alternative roles for those who wish to stay.

Retail Gazette said: “The initiative comes after the grocer found that customers are purchasing fewer traditional loaves of bread and are increasingly looking for a wider range of options, with sales of wraps, bagels and flatbreads increasing.”

The chain had aimed to make £1.5 billion worth of cost savings by 2020, with more than 10,000 jobs cut since outgoing boss Dave Lewis took over in 2014.

Jason Tarry, Tesco's UK and ROI chief executive, said: “We need to adapt to changing customer demand and tastes for bakery products so that we continue to offer customers a market-leading bakery range in store.”

The shopworkers' trade union Usdaw described the news as “devastating and upsetting,” adding: “Many of those affected by the proposed changes are skilled workers… the reality is the opportunities to find suitable alternative skilled roles may be limited for these workers.”

Tesco’s announcement comes hot on the heels of job cuts by rival supermarkets. Earlier this week, Sainsbury's announced it's cutting hundreds of jobs at its HQ. Last month, Morrisons' staff wept as bosses revealed 3,000 management job cuts.

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The UK’s biggest retailer, Tesco, has launched a range of plasters to match different skin colours and better reflect racial and ethnic diversity.

It said the plasters, which come in light, medium and dark shades, would “better represent the nation”.

Tesco, which the BBC reports is the UK’s biggest seller of own-brand plasters, added that its new plasters would be available at all of its 741 UK stores.

Britain’s largest supermarket said it developed the plasters after a tweet went viral last year describing the emotions one man experienced when he put on a plaster that matched his skin tone for the first time.

In the tweet, which has since been liked over half a million times and attracted over 100,000 retweets, Dominique Apollon wrote: “It's taken me 45 trips around the sun, but for the first time in my life I know what it feels like to have a ‘band-aid’ in my own skin tone.

“You can barely even spot it in the first image. For real I'm holding back tears.”

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The Daily Mail reports that Star Wars actor John Boyega subsequently revealed that make-up artists on film sets had to paint his plasters brown to get him “picture ready” after he cut himself on set.

Nicola Robinson, health, beauty and wellness director at Tesco, said: “We believe the launch of our new skin tone plaster range is an important step and a move that we hope will be replicated by other retailers and supermarkets across the country.”

The Guardian reports that the product idea was brought to the attention of senior Tesco team members who accelerated its launch.

The BAME staff network at Tesco, which had a hand in the product’s final design, said: “Through our research, we know how emotive a product like this can be. For example, one colleague reported that their child had felt self-conscious wearing a plaster on their face to school recently, because it didn’t match their skin tone and stood out.”

London 7/7 bombing survivor and ethnic minority rights campaigner, Sajd Mughal, tweeted:

The BBC adds that Superdrug will also be launching plasters for dark, medium and light skin tones in six weeks’ time across all of its stores. Boots also told the broadcaster that it plans to launch plasters in a range of tones.

Ikea has announced that it will shut down its Coventry city centre store this summer.

The Swedish flat-pack furniture giant said the outlet has made “consistent losses” since opening in 2007, with fewer people visiting than expected.

Ikea, which has 22 stores in the UK, said that it remains committed to growth in the UK, with the BBC noting that this is the company’s first big closure of a UK outlet.

The retailer says it will enter consultations with the 352 employees affected by the closure and hopes to retain as many as possible in the company.

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Ikea said in a statement: “The store was built over seven levels, which resulted in a significant impact on the operating costs of the store and the shopping experience for customers.

“In addition, the changing behaviour of customers in the area who prefer to shop in retail parks and online has resulted in visitor numbers being substantially lower than expected and continuing to decrease over time.”

Dave Gill, national officer for trade union Usdaw, told Sky News: “This is devastating news for Ikea staff working at the Coventry store.

“Our priorities are to seek redeployment opportunities, minimise compulsory redundancies and secure the best deal we can for our members.”

The Guardian reports that the closure could also “knock a hole in the city’s finances”, as the store is its 11th biggest business rates payer, handing over nearly £1m a year.

Responding to the planned shuttering, one analyst said that it is time for Ikea to reconsider aspects of its distinctive model.

Patrick O’Brien, GlobalData’s retail research director, said: “When the Coventry Ikea was opened, it was still very much about imposing the ‘Ikea way’ on customers; you walk this way round the maze, you pick it up yourself, you put it together yourself.

“Things have moved on in UK retail now, it’s all about how best to serve the customer, and Ikea has had to adapt and change their model.”

Retail sales in the UK fell for the first time in a quarter of a century last year, the British Retail Consortium has said, as changing consumer habits and political uncertainty left shoppers “more cautious and more conscientious”.

In what This is Money calls “a sign of the trouble affecting the high street”, the UK’s leading retail industry body found that total sales fell 0.1% last year, marking the first annual sales decline since 1995.

Perhaps most worrying for retailers was news that sales in the run-up to Christmas had been particularly weak, falling 0.9% in November and December, while a separate report from Barclaycard found a rise in consumer confidence had failed to boost festive spending.

Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the BRC, laid the blame partly on political turmoil in 2019, saying: “Twice the UK faced the prospect of a no-deal Brexit, as well as political instability that concluded in a December general election - further weakening demand for the festive period”.

However, “retailers also faced challenges as consumers became both more cautious and more conscientious as they went about their Christmas shopping,” she added.

The figures “shine a light on a terrible year for the high street” says The Guardian, during which thousands of stores have closed and 140,000 shop staff have lost their jobs. According to Deloitte's insolvency figures, 249 large retailers have fallen into administration in the last two years.

The BBC points to rising costs, “with business rates, rents and wages taking a bigger chunk of retailers' expenditure, and with footfall in decline, many shops are simply too big and frequently in the wrong locations”.

High street retailers are also under pressure from changing shopping habits, with customers spending one in every £5 online, says the broadcaster.

“Despite all the gloom, the high street isn’t quite the bloodbath that the likes of the BRC would have us believe,” says The Daily Telegraph’s Ben Marlow, who calls the BRC’s claims’ “suspect”.

He cites Tesco and Marks & Spencer as high street stalwarts whose bosses have recently made more positive noises about the future.

The same cannot be said of John Lewis, which reported a fall in festive sales and hinted it may not offer a staff bonus for the first time in 67 years.

The poor performance of the flagship high street store has already cost the job of managing director Paula Nickolds but cancelling staff bonuses “would be a watershed moment”, says Marlow, noting that John Lewis has only ever suspended it once before, during the Second World War.

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Sales of red meat have plunged as more British people choose a vegan or vegetarian diet, according to new data.

According to a study by the Veganuary charity, more than 800,000 people cut back on eating animal products for at least a month last year, meaning 3.6 million fewer animals were eaten in the first six months of 2019.

Separate research by Nielsen found that sales of red meat fell more by value than any other category in supermarkets, down by £185m. Beef sales were down by 4% and pork plunged by 6.4%. Meanwhile, sales of meat-free alternatives rose by 18% to £405 million, the highest growth rate of any category.

Mike Watkins, head of retailer and business insight at Nielsen, told The Grocer: “2019 has seen a rise in meat-free and free-from categories as consumers become more health and environmentally conscious and veganism hits the mainstream.”

The vegan market in Britain topped £1 billion for the first time last year and has doubled in the past 20 years. The number of vegans in Britain more than doubled to 600,000 between 2016 and last year, according to surveys commissioned by the Vegan Society.

Why are people moving away from meat?

Research by Kantar found that health was the most popular reason for giving up animal products, cited by 55% of respondents. Concern for animal welfare was mentioned by 49% and protecting the environment by 30%.

Responding to the news, Stuart Roberts, vice-chairman of the National Farmers Union, said: “Everyone has a right to choose whatever diet they desire. What frustrates me in this debate is that people make dietary choices thinking that just because you choose a plant product over a meat product it is more sustainable and healthy when actually with all categories, meat or plant, there are products that are more sustainable or less sustainable.”

This month, some 300,000 consumers have already pledged to go meat-free for the whole of January as part of the Veganuary campaign.

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Tesco has suspended production at a factory in China after it emerged the supermarket’s charity Christmas cards may have been made using forced labour.

The issue came to light after a six-year-old schoolgirl from south London opened one supposedly unused card decorated with a kitten wearing a Santa hat to find a despairing message from a Chinese gulag.

“We are foreign prisoners in Shanghai Qingpu prison China,” the message read in capital letters. “Forced to work against our will. Please help us and notify human rights organisation.”

The note also urged the reader to contact Peter Humphrey, a former journalist who spent 23 months imprisoned at the same Qingpu prison.

The Sunday Times, which broke the story, says the Christmas cry for help from a Shanghai prison “has turned an embarrassing spotlight on Tesco’s relationship with its Chinese suppliers and their use of forced prison labour”.

The supermarket chain’s charity cards will this year earn £300,000 for the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and Diabetes UK, “but the real price of cards that sell for £1.50 per box of 20 is that they might be benefiting the Chinese government’s prison system”, says the paper.

“The incident highlights some of the risks for big retailers sourcing low-cost products from suppliers in countries with weak human rights protections and opaque supply chains,” says the Financial Times.

The Guardian reports that “similar notes from Chinese prisoners have been reported in the past”.

In 2017, Jessica Rigby, from Essex, found a handwritten note in a Christmas card contained within a box bought from Sainsbury’s. It translated as: “Wishing you luck and happiness. Third Product Shop, Guangzhou Prison, No 6 District.”

In 2014, Karen Wisínska from Northern Ireland said she found a note in a pair of Primark trousers she bought in Belfast alleging slave labour conditions in a Chinese prison making clothes for export.

Writing in the Sunday Times, Humphrey said “the problem for British and other western companies attempting to follow fair trade guidelines is that nobody outside a Chinese prison has any real chance of knowing what goes on inside. I don’t believe major British companies would knowingly commission prison labour, but they may never be able to tell if their Chinese suppliers are sub-contracting production to the prison system”.

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Only one in 20 Black Friday deals are genuine, according to damning new research by Which?.

After checking 83 items on sale on Black Friday last year, the consumer group found that nearly all were cheaper or available for the same price at other times of the year. Announcing the finding, it claimed the annual shopping event was “all hype”.

The consumer champion told The Sun it is concerned that shoppers are at risk of being confused by Black Friday offers that might not be as good as they sound. The Guardian added that there are “signs of fatigue” among both shoppers and retailers over the annual shopping sale.

One example Which? highlighted was the Samsung soundbar – a supposed Currys PC World Black Friday deal last year at £299. Researchers found that the price dropped by a further £49 during the month after Black Friday and was priced at £279.97 on at least 13 occasions in the following six months.

At John Lewis, a De’Longhi coffee machine was offered at £399 on Black Friday, but it was then discounted to £368, and Amazon priced its Echo (2nd Gen) at 39% cheaper on Black Friday, when it had been cheaper on at least 13 occasions before the big date.

Diane Wehrle, insights director at Springboard, said that “the prevalence of discounting from retailers throughout the year” and “scepticism surrounding whether Black Friday discounts are better than those being offered generally” means consumers are “paying less attention to this period as a whole”.

In response to the claims, Currys PC World said: “When we launched our Black Friday event last year 40% of those products were the lowest price they had ever been.”

John Lewis said: “We offer our customers the best value on the high street all year round, including during the Black Friday period.”

Amazon commented: “We seek to offer our customers great value thanks to low prices all year round as well as a number of fantastic seasonal deals events.”

In a separate blow for Black Friday, the online security company, SonicWall, told Retail Insight Network that year-on-year ransomware attacks in the UK during the seven-day sale period multiplied by 12 times last year.

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High street retailers have been handed a much-needed boost as the latest data from the CBI shows a broadly unchanged level of activity in November, ending a six-month run of falling sales.

As the key Christmas shopping season starts this week, the CBI said the stabilisation reported in its survey of 52 retailers offered cautious hope for Britain’s high street.

Its data, which covers late October and the first half of November, showed strong sales at supermarkets and footwear stores. However there was a weaker showing at department stores and general clothes outlets.

The Daily Telegraph says shoppers have “dispelled pre-election worries,” giving a shot in the arm to the “battered” high street.

CBI deputy chief economist, Anna Leach, said: “Retailers are entering the festive season with a bit of hope that sales will head up, with the strongest expectations in half a year.

“Actual sales have also stabilised and have nudged above average for the time of year. And employment has stopped falling after three years of decline.”

However, she warned that: “Brexit uncertainty continues to weigh on investment plans for the year ahead” and called on the next government to “turn warm words into action”.

Howard Archer, chief economist for the EY Item Club, said the CBI data “offers retailers genuine hope that consumers are prepared to loosen their purse strings for the critical Christmas period” and suggests that a recent slump was merely “consumers taking a breather before splashing out over the festive season”.

The Retail Gazette urged caution, pointing out that the industry is “still in decline, with 41 per cent of retailers reporting a decline in sales while 38 per cent of respondents saw a rise – giving a balance of -3 for the month against the same period last year”.

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The Black Friday sales bonanza gets under way in a matter of days, but there are already plenty of deals to be had on some of the latest smartphones.

TechRadar describes the annual sales event as the “best time of the year to upgrade your phone contract”, especially as most tech companies have released their latest and greatest smartphones for the year.

In the past, the biggest sales have usually come on Black Friday itself, which typically takes place the day after Thanksgiving at the end of November and runs through to “Cyber Monday” three days later.

However, retailers have been dishing out discounts earlier this year “in an attempt to stay ahead of competitors”, The Daily Telegraph says.

Tech fans will have to wait a little bit longer to see whether prices will tumble even further when Black Friday comes around on 29 November. In the meantime, here are the biggest savings on smartphones on the web:

Apple iPhone deals

• iPhone 11 64GB: Vodafone contract with 60GB data plus unlimited calls and texts, £33 per month and £50 upfront cost using discount code TRIPH11 - mobiles.co.uk
• iPhone XR 64GB: sim free, £629 - amazon.co.uk
• iPhone XS 64GB: sim free, £699 - amazon.co.uk
• iPhone XS Max 64GB (silver only): sim free, £981 - amazon.co.uk
• iPhone 8 64GB: sim free, £479 - amazon.co.uk

Google Pixel deals

• Google Pixel 4 64GB: O2 contract with 60GB data plus unlimited calls and texts, £37 per month and an upfront cost of £25 - mobiles.co.uk
• Google Pixel 4 64GB (excluding orange): sim free, £599 - amazon.co.uk
• Google Pixel 4 XL 64GB (excluding orange): sim free, £759 - amazon.co.uk
• Google Pixel 3a 64GB: sim free, £329 - store.google.com
• Google Pixel 3a XL 64GB: sim free, £399 - store.google.com

Samsung Galaxy deals

Other smartphone discounts

• Huawei P30 Pro 128GB (excluding black): sim free, £649.95 - johnlewis.com
• Honor 20 Pro 256GB: sim free, £449.99 - mobiles.co.uk
• Sony Xperia 1 128GB: sim free, £639 - amazon.co.uk
• OnePlus 7 Pro: sim free, save £100 when using discount code 2019BF - oneplus.com

Mothercare is the latest name to disappear from the British high street as administrators plan to close all of the chain’s 79 UK stores.

The baby goods company announced on Monday that it was “not capable” of being profitable in the UK, even though international franchises are in the black, says the BBC.

Today, administrators PwC announced the store closures, which will be implemented in phases across Britain.

“This is a sad moment for a well-known high street name,” said joint administrator Zelf Hussain, adding that Mothercare “has been hit hard by increasing cost pressures and changes in consumer spending”.

Mothercare is one of many retail brands to have struggled in recent years, and the decline doesn’t appear to be slowing.

What is the extent of the problem?

Nearly 12% of shopping locations – including high street stores, shopping centres and retail parks – were empty in the first half of 2019.

The high street has been left with the highest number of empty outlets in five years after 25,700 shops closed their doors in the past year, according to Local Data Company’s review of 3,000 retail centres.

Toys R Us, Poundworld, Maplin and Mothercare are some of the bigger companies to go bust, while retailers New Look and Carpetright are undergoing restructures, reports The Guardian.

In 2018, nearly 85,000 retail jobs were lost in the UK as more retailers went bust, says the Daily Mirror.

What’s causing the problem?

The most commonly cited cause of the high street’s demise is the rise of internet shopping, which is seen as having had a dramatic impact on the way people shop.

But just 18.1% of retail purchases in the UK are made online, according to recent figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), indicating that it isn’t the internet alone that is responsible for the high-street hit.

Researchers at A&M and Retail Economics say that over the past five years, companies have had to spend 10.8% more cash on costs including wages, rents and business rates.

There has also been a shift away from spending money on products, and towards consumers spending more of their disposable income on experiences and lifestyle, says the BBC.

High rents are contributing to the retail problem, with struggling retailers blaming landlords and landlords blaming councils, says The Guardian.

What’s the future of the high street?

Retailers and unions have called for urgent government action to help the high street, but there seems to be little taking place to stop the decline.

Councils, who have been hit with ten years of austerity and cuts, don’t have the budgets they need to spruce up their high streets and try to combat decreasing footfall.

There is some good news for some retailers, however. Independent shops are doing better than their chain rivals when it comes to high street longevity.

Only a net total of 138 independent stores closed their doors in the first six months of 2019, with high numbers of barbers and beauty salons opening to boost the overall picture.

Sainsbury’s has become the first major supermarket to announce a ban on the sale of fireworks across all of its 2,300 stores.

The company revealed the news in a tweet to a customer who had expressed concern about the “distress” that fireworks cause to pets and wildlife.

The supermarket replied: “We won’t be selling fireworks in any of our stores this year. Hope this helps!”

The news has been welcomed by animal charities and campaigners. Scottish National Party MP Alison Thewliss tweeted: “Really pleased to see Sainsbury’s have taken the responsible decision to stop selling fireworks. I hope other retailers follow suit.”

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Who wants a ban?

Last year, a petition to ban the public sale of fireworks to protect animals, children and people with a phobia attracted more than 300,000 signatures, the BBC reports.

And a total of 750,000 people have signed petitions expressing concern about fireworks through the petitions.parliament.uk site in the past three years.

However, the Government argues that the current rules strike “the right balance between allowing enjoyment of fireworks, respecting traditions, ensuring safely and avoiding undue nuisance”.

All the same, Sainsbury’s decision has won widespread applause. A spokesperson for the Dogs Trust congratulated the supermarket and “encouraged others to do the same”.

“Although they can look beautiful, fireworks can be very distressing for dogs when let off unexpectedly, and because they are so easily accessible all year round, dog owners are on tenterhooks as to when their beloved pooch will next be frightened,” the spokesperson continued.

Mental health charities have also welcomed the move. Combat Stress, which supports former members of the armed forces, said: “Bonfire night can be an especially difficult time for many combat veterans with mental health issues, with the loud bangs, bright lights and strong smells from fireworks causing serious anguish.”

What are the current rules?

A wide range of fireworks are available for legal purchase throughout the year, providing the customer is 18 years old and the retailer is properly licensed.

Customers can buy fireworks from temporarily registered sellers between 15 October to 10 November, 26 to 31 December, and for the three days before Diwali and Chinese New Year.

UK law says that fireworks must not be set off between 11pm and 7am, except on special occasions such as Bonfire Night and New Year’s Eve, reports Metro.

Selling or using fireworks illegally can result in a fine of up to £5,000 or a maximum of six months in prison. “You could also get an on-the-spot fine of £90,” says the government website.

HMV is aiming to bounce back from a series of closures earlier this year by opening Europe’s largest entertainment store in Birmingham today.

The so-called HMV Vault, housed in a former Ikea warehouse near Birmingham’s Bullring shopping mall, will cover 25,000 sq ft of floor space and feature a stage, coffee shop and - according to The Times - will be “decorated with props on loan from film and TV studios for social media users to pose beside”. It will also stock around 80,000 CDs and 25,000 vinyl albums.

The opening of the store has been described as a “brave move” by The Guardian, especially “at a time when traditional high-street retailers are closing in record numbers and in a business where online streaming has battered sales of physical entertainment products”.

Indeed, HMV is one of many high street brands to have fallen on hard times in recent years, entering administration in December 2018 and overseeing the closure of 27 of its branches in early February this year, with more than 400 job losses.

Despite this significant downturn, the 98-year-old retail chain was purchased later the same month by Canadian entrepreneur Doug Putman, expressing his desire to expand the brand and managing to keep 112 HMV branches open.

Putman, who paid £883,000 for ownership of the firm, said of the Vault: “It’s a massive store with ranges no one has seen before.

“Things are changing fast and it probably seems crazy to have such a big store, but there is method behind the madness,” he added in The Telegraph. “I am a firm believer in the potential for British high street retail and HMV will play a fundamental role in ensuring that our shopping districts continue to thrive.”

The Guardian also reports Putman as saying that HMV has “more vinyl titles in stock in this store than sold in the whole of last year in the UK”, adding: “We need this to be a destination.”

Putman and HMV claim, says the Telegraph, to have “ploughed millions of pounds into the facility” and is paying “around £100,000 a year in rent”.

But the retailer is refusing to stop there, with Sky News reporting that the company plans to open even more new stores next year, though it has not been specific about the number.

Former One Direction star Liam Payne will perform at the store’s launch today, with fellow chart topper and X Factor star James Arthur playing there on Saturday, according to the Daily Mirror.

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The chief financial officer of Marks & Spencer is stepping down after little more than a year in the job.

The high street chain has announced that Humphrey Singer, who joined from Dixons Carphone in 2018, will work with the chief executive, Steve Rowe, on the succession process.

The news comes just weeks after it was announced the firm would drop out of the FTSE 100 for the first time, The Guardian says. The relegation, which kicks in today, came because of declining market valuation as the once imperious Marks & Spencer struggles to compete on clothing with rivals such as H&M and Zara.

This is the company's second high-profile exit within a matter of months. Jill McDonald, the clothing, home and beauty managing director, was sacked in July, after which Rowe wrestled took control of the division.

Rowe said: “Humphrey has been a huge asset to the business… I look forward to continuing to work with him as we search for his successor.”

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The Financial Times describes his departure is a “blow” for the retailer.

Announcing his decision, Singer said: “After 18 months of working with Steve to lead the transformation strategy and rebuild the finance function, I have decided that now is the right time to move on.”

Singer's tenure has been “brief by the standards of finance chiefs at major listed companies”, Sky News says, and his departure follows “persistent rumours that he was unhappy in the role”.

Aldi’s profits collapsed by nearly one fifth last year, despite a rise in sales for the German supermarket chain.

Pre-tax profits dived 18% to £182.2m as the retailer splashed £530m on expansion and slashed prices on nearly one third of its products.

The fall in profits came despite sales rising 11% to reach £11.3bn in the year to December 2018. The chain opened more than a store a week and pulled in 800,000 extra shoppers during the 12 months in question.

Chief executive, Giles Hurley, was in a bullish mood as he discussed the declining profits: “We are a long-term business not like other supermarkets. We are focused on sales, stores, customer numbers and growth,” he said.

Despite the fall in profits, he announced a major expansion, saying that over the next two years, the company plans to inject a further £1bn in around 100 new stores. The chain hopes to increase the number of stores it has from 840 to 1,200 stores by 2025.

More than half of British households shop at Aldi, which opened its first UK store in 1990. Hurley said: “The reality is that almost 50% of the population of the UK doesn't currently shop with us and they tell us the main reason for that is that they don't have a store near us.”

The BBC says the expansion is in contrast to “big established grocers” who are opening “few, if any new stores”.

Adam Leyland, editor of The Grocer magazine, says such expansion is “not straightforward” because of a lack of parking spaces.

“But they are determined to do it and they are a very capable grocer,” he said. “We've seen over the years how they've responded to the dynamics of the UK market.”