122 Days to Christmas

Posted by Paul Hargreaves on 28/08/2012

As I write this crowds of incredibly young people are massing outside our offices being dropped off for the Reading Festival - yes we can almost see the stage from our premises

This means that the last vaguely civilised week of the year has come and gone as Christmas stock starts arriving next week! Yes only 122 days left, the whiteboard at the logistics end of our office informs me!

Most independent retailers are looking forward more than usual to this busy trading period, as the summer weather has meant that many are well behind where they wanted to be Mid-August, with some farm shops for the months of June & July reporting sales of 10% down on last year. As I have said before I do believe this is more attributable to the weather than economic conditions, and this is backed up by a couple of retailers I have spoken to this week who are reporting a post-Olympic buoyancy - again probably due to better weather in the south since the Olympics.

By the way the Olympic logistical carnage that was meant to happen for any company trying to deliver in the London area never happened at all. In fact our London driver reports that the roads were emptier than normal making it easier for him to do his job. I wonder how much money companies wasted on planning for a disaster that never happened. We didn’t, and this time we were right in our predictions that the net effect would be zero due to the number of Londoners choosing not to go to work during the Olympics. A note of caution though, with the Paralympics nearly selling out, schools back and people back at work next week after the Bank Holiday, we could yet see difficulties.

The final match of my tennis season complete also means that Speciality Food Show is upon us. They say it will be the largest ever (but they always say that!) - Cotswold Fayre certainly has a bigger presence there than ever before sponsoring the Small Business Forum and having a more spacious stand where you can grab a free coffee and mingle with other independent food retailers. I look forward to seeing you there! Must get on with preparing my presentation on “Innovation in Food”.

See you soon!