West End Retail Bucks National Trend

For once, it looks like our sense was spot on. The December ‘VIP’ shopping day in the West End appears to have worked well – together with stores starting their January sales a month early, analysts were looking to see whether this might counteract the ‘Westfield Effect’, with flocks of shoppers lured away by the beautifully-advertised new shopping mecca in White City.

Retail figures for December are now in, and the West End seems to have done rather well. Shopper footfall in the West End actually rose a bit (+0.4%) compared to December 2007. This is a stonking performance when you think about it, compared to a hefty national dip of over -7%.

This boost may be in part due to European and Middle East shoppers taking advantage of the weaker £. For the premium retail area of our central shopper district, there are some easy ways to illustrate why they might be tempted here – just how much cheaper it is to buy a Gucci handbag, a bottle of Chanel, a bottle of Moet and some YSL Touche Eclat make-up in the West End rather than in Paris, have been published here. That list sounds to us like all the shoppers will have been either women or drag queens (although the boys we know wouldn’t say ‘Non’ to the Moet). So do we take it that sales of Black & Decker and Ginsters didn’t do as well, then?

Image of a sale in a sale-sign shop from the justified sinner’s photostream licensed under the Creative Commons