Retail news

• Busy high streets after lockdown prompt Covid fears but numbers still down

  06-12-2020 21:47
  
  Packed scenes in Nottingham force Christmas market to close, but visitors to malls were down 38% on the year Coronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageCrowded scenes on the first weekend of Christmas shopping after the easing of lockdown in England have prompted fears over a lack of social distancing and the risk of spreading coronavirus.Despite overall footfall being down on the same period last year, images emerged on Sunday of busy high streets with shoppers standing c
  
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• The Guardian view on advent: what are we waiting for? | Editorial

  06-12-2020 19:25
  
  This year we have learned to mark time once more – bringing frustration and despair, but also new pleasures
  With advent, we have entered a period of codified waiting. For Christians this means liturgical offices and music, the lighting of candles and, in the Orthodox church, a 40-day fast, in expectation of both Christmas and the second coming. For unbelievers, and those for whom the festival is all about feasting and presents, it often means advent calendars (though the more expensive of
  
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• Mike Ashley makes eleventh-hour play for Debenhams

  06-12-2020 18:14
  Once-spurned billionaire returns for last-minute swoop on department store
  
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• Debenhams in 11th-hour rescue talks with Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group

  06-12-2020 14:13 via retailgazette.co.uk
  // Hope for 12,000 Debenhams employees as Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group swoops in for last-minute rescue talks
  // Debenhams was in the process of a liquidation process after JD Sports dropped out of sales talks last week
  // Debenhams has been in administration since April, and it went up for sale as part of itDebenhams staff have been thrown a glimmer of hope after the department store chain entered 11th-hour talks with Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group about a possible rescue.
  According to&
  
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• Boom in websites supporting local UK shops amid Covid lockdowns

  06-12-2020 13:19
  
  Stream of initiatives helping independent businesses appear across BritainCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageWhen website developer Nathali Alpi heard that England was going into another month-long lockdown at the start of November, she was immediately worried for her friends running independent shops around Bristol. “I knew they would be missing all that footfall at one of the most important times of the year - and I just didn’t know how they would sur
  
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• “There is a new value system at play” – Mary Portas on the high street’s future

  06-12-2020 13:14 via retailgazette.co.uk
  // Mary Portas says the high street needs to change, not just be saved
  // Speaking to The Observer, she says the strategy of “stacking stuff high and selling it fast” was now “completely and utterly over”Mary Portas has said the high street brands that have dominated for years have “failed to offer anything beyond mediocrity” and implored retailers and the government to think about changing the high street, rather than just save it.
  In an interview with T
  
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• Shoppers flock to high streets in England on 1st Saturday after lockdown lifted

  06-12-2020 12:16 via retailgazette.co.uk
  // Hordes of people could be seen filling up town centres across England in first Saturday since lockdown ended
  // Town centres in places such as York, Colchester and Bournemouth were full
  // London’s Oxford Street and Regent Street also had hoardes of shoppersThousands of people hit the high street in England on the first Saturday since the second and month-long national lockdown was lifted.
  Hordes of people could be seen filling up town centres in places such as York, Colchester and Bour
  
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• Crazy golf on the first floor? UK’s department stores face radical remake

  06-12-2020 10:15
  
  As high street chains tumble, developers are looking for new uses for empty buildingsGyms, crazy golf, student flats, hotels or even a whisky-based tourist attraction: the future of many department store sites is unlikely to involve shopping. More than 200 of them are now empty or closing next year, and property experts say the shift will prompt a reinvention of malls and town centres on a scale not seen since the postwar years.Last week’s decision to wind down Debenhams is likely to see t
  
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• Even now, Philip Green’s erstwhile chums squirm to avoid criticising the fallen tycoon | Catherine Bennett

  06-12-2020 09:30
  
  David Cameron and Michael Gove once held him up as a paragon for us mere mortalsPrince Philip. Philip May. Philip Hammond. Philip Hollobone. The Philippines. That Philips abound in David Cameron’s autobiography makes it all the more frustrating when you search for any references to Sir Philip Green, whom Cameron once favoured most out of all of the Philips.Philip Green, previously knighted by Tony Blair, was deferred to and esteemed to the point of his appointment in 2010 as the Cameron go
  
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• Queen’s coffers hit by high street turmoil

  06-12-2020 09:00
  Crown Estate owed millions by chains including New Look and PizzaExpress after restructurings
  
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• Don’t save the high street – change it completely, says retail guru Mary Portas

  06-12-2020 09:00
  
  The pandemic has accelerated huge shifts in the way people shop. Now firms and government will have to wake up and innovateCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageThe collapse of three major chains last week has put 30,000 retail jobs at risk and triggered fears for the future of town centres. But the picture isn’t all bleak, according to experts including the former government retail tsar, Mary Portas, who says there is too much nostalgia and too little optimism
  
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