Storming start to sales season cheers retailers

Retailers finally had something to celebrate yesterday after a lacklustre festive season as shoppers stormed the post-Christmas sales.

The number of shoppers at the Boxing Day sales was up 8.6% on the year before, according to retail analysts.

With crowds packing shopping centres across Britain as more big-name stores opened yesterday, the sales appeared to have got off to a booming start.

Fears about falling house prices and the threat of war have been blamed for poor trading in the run-up to Christmas, but these worries did not seem to have dented consumer confidence yesterday. By mid-morning at Gemini retail park near Warrington, the queue to the checkout in Next was taking between 90 minutes and two hours.

Joan Wood, 52, from Whiston, said: "Looking at the people in there, the economy doesn't seem to be bothering them. It is just spend, spend spend."

That will be music to the ears of retailers after a disappointing festive season in which shopper numbers on Christmas Eve were down more than 10% on last year.

David Smyth, marketing manager at analysts FootFall, said: "Both the week before Christmas and the weekend before Christmas were significantly down on the same period in 2001 with drops of 7.2% and 7.5% respectively.

"Now prices have been slashed as the sales start, it will be interesting to see whether this increase in shoppers on Boxing Day will continue over the first week of the sales."

Further details emerged yesterday of trading in the holiday period, with John Lewis blaming "unseasonably warm weather" for disappointing clothing sales before Christmas.

The picture was not all bleak. The photographic chain Jessops announced record sales driven by the popularity of digital cameras, and John Lewis said electronics and toys had "performed strongly".

Gareth Thomas, director of selling at John Lewis, said: "Trading has been good over the Christmas period, but not great."

At the Bluewater shopping complex in Kent, hundreds queued from 2am for bargains. Around 180,000 people were expected to visit yesterday, a spokeswoman said. The Trafford centre in Manchester reported that 50,000 people had passed through its doors by lunchtime.

"We think we will top the 110,000 shoppers we had on the same day last year," its spokeswoman said.

In London, there were queues from 3am outside Hamleys toy shop in Regent Street, where a miniature petrol-powered Mercedes sports car was sold for one-10th of its original price.

The red two-seater junior 500 SL was bought for £795 by Chris Brown, 38, who said: "It is for my five-year-old, Jacob. Hopefully, it will be an investment for him in future years."

Few shoppers in Oxford Street seemed put off by worries over falling house or share prices. Outside Selfridges, Elaine Hart-Davies, 48, said: "We haven't got a big mortgage and I only spend what I can afford. We live in Hampstead and house prices don't tend to go down there."

Jean Carter, 56, from south London, said: "I am worried about my pension, and worried about going to war. But I just enjoy each day as I find it."

Few would admit to concerns about the economy. At the Gemini retail park, Paul Platt, 45, from St Helens, shook his head in disbelief.

"It is just crazy. People have too much disposable income and don't know what to spend it on. People aren't thinking ahead." But he added: "Even if the housing market does collapse, things will bounce back like they did in the late 80s."

Selina Jaundrell, 72, from Burtonwood, near Warrington, said: "It seems as if there are as many people in the M&S sales as there are every year."

· Supermarket chain Tesco said yesterday that sales through its internet arm reached record levels of more than £10m a week in the run-up to Christmas.