Lockdowns across 2020 alone cost British “non-essential” retail £22 billion in lost sales, according to a new analysis by the British Retail Consortium (BRC). All the while, online retail profits – such as for the fashion retailer ASOS – have soared. Here are the key findings:
2020 was the worst year on record for retail sales growth with in-store non-food declining by 24% compared with 2019. These results have also been reflected in footfall, which was down over 40% in 2020. After some retailers embraced rapid increases in demand, others found their doors closed for the third time at the end of last year.
The BRC calculates that the three lockdowns cost “non-food” stores – mainly “non-essential” retail – an estimated £22 billion in lost sales. Furthermore, tighter restrictions in the crucial run-up to Christmas hampered retailers’ ability to generate much-needed turnover, which would have helped power their recovery in 2021. Retailers contributed £17 billion in business taxes in 2019, collecting a further £46 billion in VAT. A strong retail sector is essential to ensuring these future revenue streams for Government and local councils, vital for supporting local communities.
A recent study by the Local Data Company found that 11,000 shops permanently closed in the UK in 2020. This is expected to be followed by a further 18,000 closures in 2021.
Helen Dickinson OBE, Chief Executive of the BRC, said that retail firms are in desperate need of support from the Government in order to continue trading.
After 2020 proved to be the worst year on record, it is essential that the Chancellor uses the Spring budget to support those businesses hardest hit by the pandemic. Vital support in the form of an extension to the business rates relief and moratorium on debt enforcement, as well as removing state aid caps on Covid business grants, would relieve struggling businesses of bills they cannot currently pay and allow them to trade their way to recovery.
Tackling the challenge of Rates, Rents and Grants should be the Government’s immediate priority to ensuring the survival and revival of non-essential retailers and protecting the jobs of hundreds of thousands of retail workers across the country. The investment we provide to retailers now, will be repaid many times over through more jobs and greater tax revenues in the future.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: The Guardian has detailed the ways in which various “non-essential” retailers are planning to make real-life shopping trips “a pastime once again” when lockdown is eased slightly on Monday.
Marks & Spencer will instigate “greeters” at the doors of its stores, and contact-free bra fittings. There will be edits designed for current lifestyles, from barbecues in the garden, to working from home.
At John Lewis, Beautycycle will be in place from April 19th. For every five items of beauty packaging returned, customers will get £10 off their next beauty purchase until the end of April.
Gap will be offering free masks with a purchase to those with their Gap+ app, and Primark will be open two more hours every day next week.
Other retailers are taking a playful approach. River Island, which will launch stores in Coventry and Swindon next week, has a “shop like it’s 2019” campaign; one sign in store says: “In 2019 pyjamas were not acceptable work attire.” Anyone who makes a purchase in April will receive a voucher for 20.19% off their next purchase.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
“The Guardian has detailed the ways in which various “non-essential” retailers are planning to make real-life shopping trips “a pastime once again” when lockdown is eased slightly on Monday.”
But only for masked up, pilled up, scared of their own shadow Guardian readers.
For the rest of us it remains a nightmare.
For those that comply, it’s still a nightmare and the government, I mean Bill Gates want it all to be permanent. Time to resist.
M&S’s main demographic continues to be the genteel elderly, despite their attempts to get down wiv da yoof.
What they want to know is if knickers and pants are still in the same place, not to be Greeted by some smiley young ignoramus making sure they are wearing their mask correctly.
Ed. Meant to be reply to iane below.
Knickers are now supplied for facial use only.
A nightmare which will be emphasized by M&S ‘greeters’! Yikes – I should love to know why the management think that is a good idea {anyone here see what I am missing?}.
I treat all muzzle wearers in public as what the kids call NPCs (non-player characters) so I make no eye contact or engage in any communication with them. The M&S greeters by me get right stroppy when I don’t respond to their greetings/farewells. Looking forward to more of that soon.
That said, the headteacher at my daughters primary school who stands at the front gate in a morning is used to me ignoring her since they brought in an outdoor muzzle request for parents.
The psychos running these stores, I think, actually believe people are loving it. Sadly a lot do. And the bloody in-store gestapo Karens and Darrens, can’t believe how much power they’ve been given! (No disrespect to people named Karen or Darren, who actually think.) But what is the alternative? On-line? Exactly where they want us. Has anyone read “The Machine Stops” by E.M.Forster. Written over 110 years ago, its the one novel I keep coming back to. The vision of that future resonates so well now!
Hmmmmm, thanks, but I think I’ll be giving the New Normal a miss.
The new normal is people sitting on their sofas ordering online.
Unemployment up, business rates income down.
Covid just exacerbated the long term trend to online.
The High st of the 00’s passed away after a long illness in 2020.
ALL TOGETHER NOW: “IF IT SAVES ONE LIFE!!!”.
With the economic and employment prospects I think it’ll be a bit less sitting on the sofa and ordering online and rather more just sitting on the sofa…
well how else are they supposed to make us accept the “new normal”.
Our societies must align and be compatible to get Chinese Finance to make us their western hub in the City of London
Sweden all cause mortality
No masks, no lockdown, no test and trace, no vaccines
They followed the original pandemic plan and beat most of Europe by every measure
Just to add – Sweden was a little above 2015-2019 average then a little below in 2021.
As of 18th March Sweden’s 2021 ‘excess’ mortality is below zero
Its a shame they can’t all come together, pool resources to cover legal costs and all completely disregard the government ‘guidelines’.
They have the power to pit a stop to this nonsense but sadly lack the common srnse to see it.
Just as with the banks it’s in the big players interest to get out of retail altogether.
I’m as complicit as anyone since I have banked entirely online for at least 4 years.
If I need a bank statement for proof of identity I have phone them to ask for one specially, it’s outside their usual practices but they don’t charge so no complaints.
Most are individual shop owners. The chain shops are all too ready to join the woke/CV19 bllx.
bankrupt us into submission
World Health Organisation advising against vaccines except for the most at risk
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-56698854
““On average in high-income countries, almost one in four people have received a Covid-19 vaccine. In low-income countries, it’s one in more than 500,” he said.”
That offer should be the final nail in the GAP’s coffin.
Is this the best GAPs marketing department can come up with after 3 months of lockdown 3 ?
Might as well offer Jewish customers a free yellow star sew on badge.
I’m wondering if it’s only 22 billion.
Very likely a great deal more.
Shopping circa 2030…
First laugh of the day, thank you.
Stand aside for the stampede – that should bring the punters in in their droves!
Not me.
But then again, I never shopped there to start with.
Oh, goody goody. How bloody desperate do they think some us are?
No High Street shopping for me until the muzzles go.Yes I can go in unnappied but hate the site of other muzzled shoppers and assistants . I don’t like the one way systems etc but could live with them in the short term -it’s the muzzles that freak me out .
Most one way systems in shops seem to be routinely ignored but as when larger ‘non-essential’ retail re-opened last summer they will enforce all aspects of Social Distancing zealously.
Exactly how I feel about it all.
We have just got back from our local market and am pleased to report there are a lot less masks.
GOOD!!!
Yes, I think they have all been sold in my region!
Waiting for their freebie from GAP.
Does anybody else feel as though we’re living in groundhog year? We’re making the exact same mistakes as last summer. Barely any “deaths” or “cases” and yet a population in lockdown. Only to be released half way through summer when the seasonal virus has all but disappeared. Presumably with the aim that within a few weeks, as autumn draws near and cases begin to rise, we can be told it’s all because we came out of lockdown; we should never have done it, it was too early. Whereas if we were to be released now it’d show the whole thing for the scam that it is as cases continue to remain on the floor for months.
Exactly what I’ve been thinking for a while.
They’re never going to let us out.
Lockdown might have made sense in March 2020, but now it doesn’t, at all. If this was about the virus, lockdown would be lifted by now.
Free masks. Are they having a laugh? That’s Gap added to my list of places to boycott.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A10YT_A-QKM&feature=youtu.be Hugo Talks: So It’s ALL SHOPS THEN Includes a letter from Brighton and Hove Council to all business owners, outlining the new rules regarding the NHS app, track and trace information, etc, not just for pubs, but other shops and businesses. “They have also made it very clear that nothing will stop the planned outcomes.” The road map and aim was set out by the PMO and is as follows (note similarities to Victoria): – Phase in secondary lock down restrictions on a rolling basis, starting with major metropolitan areas first and expanding outward. Expected by November 2020. – Rush the acquisition of (or construction of) isolation facilities across every province and territory. Expected by December 2020.– Daily new cases of COVID-19 will surge beyond capacity of testing, including increases in COVID related deaths following the same growth curves. Expected by end of November 2020.– Complete and total secondary lock down (much stricter than the first and second rolling phase restrictions). Expected by end of December 2020 – early January 2021.– Reform and expansion of the unemployment program to be transitioned into the universal basic income program. Expected by Q1 2021.– Projected COVID-19 mutation and/or co-infection with secondary virus… Read more »
Yeah, welcome to my store, you stick-up-your-nose, jabberwocked, face-knickered, tracked-and-traced, cringing, six-foot-distanced, compliant bag of toxic filth.
Enjoy your visit. Follow the one-way signs,
No sympathy for any of these big retailers, they can all go under now. I’m not interested in greeters at doors, it’s another word for security guard.
If these big businesses had told the government to stuff it and all got together and remained open, they wouldn’t be in this situation now.
The small business retailers I feel sorry for, the ones that tried to find a way to stay open and we’re met by council officialdom and without back up from elsewhere were forced to close.
Shopping is now a nightmare to me as I’m fully awake and witnessing all the wearing on faces of the psychological garments are in themselves causing me distress. I already have Coulrophobia and these things on people’s faces are a reminder of that.
Although in Scotland we won’t be tortured with this until the 26th April as our clothes shops are not essential.
The phrase “non-essential” is key. If it’s non-essential there’s no point doing it unless it’s enjoyable. They can absolutely count on not getting any business from me.
Or why don’t you try just telling all the shops to ignore the rules and just open up. You have been invisible for a year. You have watched the government ruin business and said and done nothing. Oh give us money please government so we can survive. You useless POS.