The end of the world as we know it ……..

Actually not ……….. it’s just Tesco the almighty force of retailing has posted bad figures – actually they are not really pants as in they are not going bust they will not be closing 100’s of shops or laying off 100’ of sales staff they just took less money and their pre-Christmas festive price promotion didn’t produce the desired lift in sales – so less dividends for the shareholders no big problem – but reading my twitter timeline and seeing the retail press headlines and loads of so called retail guru comments you would have thought we had retail Armageddon going on………. Please get a grip!

My view on this was that the customer doesn’t believe in all the so called promotions – they are now thinking why are you suddenly reducing stuff why not all the time and second most of them assume the supplier is being squeezed – they are not silly – what made me laugh was the comments over the whole week by all the supermarkets about Christmas trading and using champagne sales as a benchmark for if the customer is flush and spending or not – what is that about?

My second observation is not one of the big supermarket’s got into the festive feel – the stores looked more like sale and promotion day not “ tempt your family and spend money on these delicious treats“ …

To back up my observations I give you the amazing Booth’s supermarket group – they are based in the North of England and my mother the fabulous Mrs Smith worships at the one in Lytham and I just love going when I stay with my parents – they have a stunning array of food and the presentation is fabulous (just so you know I’m a Waitrose shopper) and the wide aisles – no piped music and no vile scratchy announcements and at Christmas the displays were just amazing and yes we were tempted you couldn’t help but be tempted then they delivered great results “Booths, the family owned regional food and drink retailer are celebrating strong sales over Christmas with a total sales increase of 7.45%. Like for like sales rose to 3.07% compared with the same period in 2010. Booths opened two new stores in November in Media CityUK and Penrith and sales were robust throughout the 28 stores”

So maybe the public is fed up with discounts and promotions and gimmicks and just wants nice product to cheer themselves up with or give themselves a treat ……… discounting is not all it’s cracked up to be folks……….