Fears that shops will run out of stock has prompted many people to start their Christmas shopping early, reveals a survey by Barclaycard, with 52% buying gifts earlier than they would normally. So would gift indies agree?
For Liz Kemp, owner of three Kemps stores – two in Malton and one in Whitby – Christmas started early with customers in Kemps General Store and Kemps Books in Malton starting their festive shopping in August and continuing to shop early for Christmas gifts. “They are also sharing with us their determination to support indie businesses and their reticence to shop in cities, big out of town centres and online.
“In fact, being a small town business has certainly played in our favour,” continues Liz. “However, our challenges have been the supply chain with plenty of stock arriving late, subject to surcharges and in very ad hoc delivery patterns with part orders arriving and items missing. We buy a lot from UK makers and suppliers, but this has not protected us from supply chain issues with scarcity and increased raw material costs affecting everyone.”
In Bury St Edmunds, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas with customers finally coming out to shop!” says Lesley Bancroft, director of Buy The Light. “Although it’s taken a while for it to happen, we have been quite busy over the last few weeks,” she reports. “With the media forecasting shortages, many customers have felt the need to shop early and we’ve been fortunate to be on hand to help as we have quite high stock levels at the moment.”
Good news for Lesley is that customer spend seems to be above average. “This follows our usual Christmas pattern, but the higher spend is a little earlier than normal,” she points out. “As our stock comes from the UK, luckily it’s not stuck in the ports – another reason to support British made goods! – so fortunately, we haven’t been hit by stock shortages.”
At Emporium Gifts in Cheltenham, owner David Theobalds also reports that stock shortages haven’t been much of an issue, although some Christmas decorations have been a bit late in arriving.
“We anticipated what was going to happen and pre-ordered,” he commented. “We haven’t found that people are shopping any earlier than normal this Christmas. We’ve found that generally, they wait until after half term and start thinking about it. Nevertheless, it’s a bit of double-edged sword this year because it’s the supermarkets that generally put out their Christmas stock early, getting people into the Christmas mindset. But due to stock issues, that hasn’t happened this year, making people think that there’s still a while to go. Therefore while some people have panicked about buying early to avoid shortages, others seem to be more relaxed about it.”
According to figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC), total retail sales increase by 1.3% last month.
Top: With stock issues dominating the headlines, people have been shopping early for Christmas.
