Trouble on the high street: The winners and losers of the Christmas battle

This is Money Podcast

This is Money

Business News, Business, Investing, News

4.1 • 650 Ratings

🗓️ 11 January 2019

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Just how bad was Christmas for Britain’s shops? Retailers sounded the alarm early when advent brought a string of warnings about a terrible November, but this week we started to find out what the crucial festive period really brought.

A rush of results arrived, as everyone from the big supermarkets to M&S, Debenhams and John Lewis updated on Christmas sales.

The bar had been set low, but it turned out to be not quite so bad as thought – with a few winners and a bunch of losers who escaped the drubbing feared.

On this week’s podcast, This is Money’s retail expert Emily Hardy, joins Simon Lambert and Georgie Frost to sift through the figures and look at who did well and who didn’t.

The team also look at the crucial question of whether retailers with decent sales will turn those into profit, or whether getting items off the shelves at a discount cost them dear?

Also on the agenda is what’s causing the malaise. Is it the internet, a lack of quality, or simply Britain hitting peak stuff? Simon has a theory based on sales, Amazon, people buying presents later and being a bit more discerning.

Away from the high street, we also discuss how to get a new job in 2019 and find out about the man whose expensive £4,000 wasted romantic trip after a break-up spurred him on to create Transfer Travel - the ‘eBay for unwanted holidays’.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to This Is Money podcast in partnership with NS&I. I'm your host, Georgie Frost,
0:06.0	and alongside editor Simon Lambert Knight Today is business reporter Emily Hardy.
0:10.6	And coming up, murder on the high street. It's what's been called the worst Christmas trading period.
0:16.2	We cast a critical eye over the retail sector and find out who were the winners, if there were any,
0:20.9	and the losers of the festive period. Also today, New Year and New You and all that jazz.
0:26.3	We look at what you can do to land a new job and explore a new website that has your back
0:31.0	if you get dumped before heading on holiday. And don't forget you start up to date with all the latest
0:35.4	breaking money news, just go to this ismoney.com.
0:38.0	UK or download the app.
0:40.1	This is Money brought to you in partnership with Ennis and I.
0:43.1	For a gift your little ones will appreciate even when they're not so little.
0:46.4	Give them premium bonds at ns and I.com.
0:49.0	But first, the High Street hasn't looked too rosy for some time, but ahead of the crucial Christmas trading period, the doomsayers predicted this could be an absolute nightmare for the sector.
0:58.0	And the latest stats seem to bear this out.
1:00.0	The British Retail Consortium said this was the worst festive period in a decade,
1:04.0	while a separate report from Barclay card said consumer spending grew at the lowest rate seen since March 2016. We also had a couple of
1:12.3	big names for by the wayside, HMV and Saville Row. Companies have been releasing their trading
1:16.7	figures this week. Was there any cause for festive cheer? A very warm welcome to you both.
1:22.8	Emily, I'm going to come to you first and welcome to the podcast. This is your first one. You are the retail sector
1:29.0	expert, so this one is definitely for you. Just give us a bit of an update because this has been
1:32.9	something that we've been talking about for, well, not just Christmas, this has been going on
1:36.3	for years. Yeah, and the warning signs for this, this Christmas in particular were quite bad.
	...

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