With Black Friday finally behind us, retailers can focus on making the most of the last 20 trading days before Christmas. It’s largely pointless to attempt to sum up how Black Friday went, as every individual retailer and supplier will have had a different experience, based on their approach to the event. So, I hope you got what you wanted from it – whatever that may be. Overall, I get the impression that November was not a bad month for many UK toy retailers, albeit perhaps a bit back-ended?
I did find one statistic intriguing (and slightly alarming): US data suggests that as much as 95% of Black Friday sales in America were financed, either on ‘buy now, pay later’ schemes or on credit cards that the consumer isn’t planning to pay off within 30 days. I do hope that isn’t the case here in the UK, but I fear that more consumers are building up debt than ever before, and while we all love people buying stuff (keeping us all in business in the process) I do wonder whether this level of finance is healthy and indeed sustainable.
Speaking of healthy and sustainable, Argos recently released some year-end figures (for the 12 months to 1st March ’25), which showed the retailer swinging from a £37m profit the previous year to a £222m loss. A “subdued and highly competitive general merchandise market” was blamed for the retailer’s reversal in fortune, and while there is no doubt that there is more than a grain of truth in that statement, it’s also the case that every retailer is facing the same conditions. I do wonder if these numbers might reignite the internal conversation at Sainsbury’s about whether to sell or keep Argos within the business. JD.Com is presumably monitoring the situation closely…
I mentioned last week that I had signed up to Temu just to see how they operated, and I now realise that I have opened a portal to never-ending purgatory (literally – it makes ‘the Hellmouth of Burton-on-Trent’ look like The Seychelles). As someone pointed out to me: “Your email address is communicating with an AI administrator ‘who’ will never cease to bombard you, irrespective of whether you buy or not. Trying to block ‘him/her’ is futile as they have no soul. Unfortunately, your interest in wanting to know how they operate will fill your inbox for eternity.” I fear he may be right – what have I done?!
Amongst this retail maelstrom, there have thankfully been some positive stories to report this week…
Read the rest here.
