UK retailers may have to cut thousands of jobs after bleak Christmas | Retail industry
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/07/uk-retailers-cut-jobs-christmas-sales-growth-card-spending
Posted by Sound_of_music12
UK retailers may have to cut thousands of jobs after bleak Christmas | Retail industry
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/07/uk-retailers-cut-jobs-christmas-sales-growth-card-spending
Posted by Sound_of_music12
45 Comments
We have moved to a digital age unfortunately, and it’s many trappings.
A very serious thought about how we will pay for the future is needed, everything is being consolidated either by economics of scale, technology or by investment firms buying everything up.
Good thing there’s seventeen milestones and twelve checkpoints for growth
I saw this coming at the budget. I really hope we don’t go into recession.
Retail, Leisure and Hospitality have had a woeful 12 months. Unfortunately, this is not going to be pretty.
Raise prices and wonders why isn’t anyone buying it.
Every time I’ve been shopping over Christmas I’ve noticed more and more the quality has either been just awful and not worth the price or they have shrunk the item to the point it’s just not worth the price. So instead of cutting jobs, how about making your products actually competitive.
Wait for blame Labour. Not the shit show of the last fourteen years.
Too high prices and little or no stock. Can’t compete anymore with online warehouse distributions.
Unfortunately, if your schitck is ‘the economy is dead’ and you say that for years, increase taxes, and continue to talk about how bad the economy is…is there any wonder people don’t spend?
I don’t blame Labour entirely…but I do, as many Labour people also think, think they talked down the economy a little too much.
I have already noticed prices going up when I did my food shopping at the weekend. The rest of the year is not looking better so far.
I recently went to Meadowhall to buy a black coat. It’s a huge shopping mall. Just a black puffer jacket coat, no hood. I went into every single mens shop in the building and not a single one had one. Three seconds on ASOS and I found a lovely one, which arrived the next day.
Shops never have anything in, and it’s a pain in the ass walking around.
It’s almost like bankrupting the middle class, removing public services, making everything expensive, killing the jobs market, and giving everything to the 1% maybe isn’t a good idea.
Consumerism is dying, because people simply don’t need to keep buying *stuff*.
Prices are too high and quality is too low for people to justify spending.
People’s incomes have been significantly reduced over the last few years, to where many people are spending almost 3/4 of their wages on bills / rent.
It’s a combination of many things.
With the constant enshitification, pricehikes, and shrinkflation, more and more I look at products and decide its just not worth bothering with. Why spend through the nose for something too piddly and badly made to enjoy? It seems to me like huge chunks of the economy are running off of habit and nostalgia for when their brand used to be good.
How is this not a direct result of this
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/06/ftse-100-bosses-more-pay-by-noon-today-than-average-worker-in-a-year
Can’t keep blaming governments when it’s the people at the top levels of these businesses paying themselves obscene amounts of cash instead of filtering it down to their workers in the form of pay rises…
Travel to shops, go into store, they don’t have what you’re looking for or it’s very expensive. Google it, found, cheaper, delivered next day…
This is the tip of the iceberg. When critical services and spending are pushed to the limit (housing/energy/water/train travel) by companies that are trying to grab every last penny they can from you. It’s no surprise people have no money.
Now extend this to that coffee shop/bakery/deli, people just don’t have the spare cash to spend in the economy any more
It’s a downward spiral. People make less money so shops close, less reason to go into town because there’s less shops, less foot traffic means less shops, less employers means people make less money.
Classic whiny companies. They kept raising prices, used shitty anticonsumer tactics, enshittified everything while at it, got extremely greedy, posted record profits, laid off staff, then cried like little bitches when people stopped buying their grossly overpriced junk.
Fortunately Evri are the new champions of physical
Shopping as they make buying online with any certainty impossible.
As someone with access issues and the real lack of progress outside of the metropolitan areas. Rather than struggling to travel, park and then find suitable shops which hopefully have what I require. I find it more convenient nowadays to shop online. Certainly I miss on the trying on experience. However as a wheelchair user, access to the environment and the goods within varies from ok to mission impossible. They had a chance to improve the built up environment but chose to water down the 2015 legislation instead. This also limits access for elderly and pushchairs alike .
People are buying a lot of Temu-style slop. This isn’t surprising.
I’ve been to Currys 3 times trying to buy either a TV or a gaming monitor, went there cause I’m still not sure which and Currys would be a good place to ask such a question, not once did a member of staff even say hello they’re just all standing in groups talking or hiding somewhere on their phones like it’s amazing how much they can actually ignore a visibly confused person who wants to spend money. The only reason you pick curries over Argos is the chance to speak to an expert or someone who at least knows a bit more than you do. The obvious thing would be why didn’t I approach someone but they’re not very approachable and I’ve anxiety. Got the help I needed from YouTubers and could of just ordered on Amazon.
One of the TVs I was looking at Currys price match Argos but assuming they’ve built in the cost of paying staff that don’t do very much if currys just adopted a more Argos model could they then offer a more competitive price 🤷♂️
Maybe they could cut CEO bonuses and shareholder dividends? Times is tough.
They’re always moaning about us wasting money, make your fucking minds up!
People would rather buy hauls from temu and sheine sweat shops
People realising they’ve got everything they need and don’t need to constantly keep upgrading.
No, it’s just January and they’re saving on staff costs
These comments are appallingly speculative.
The BRC uses total retail data for the U.K. including online, this isn’t a case of people shopping more online and the high street seeing less. The inflation adjusted decline includes both online and in store collectively.
Major retailers have not had significant margin expansion, mid term it’s contracting. Stop moaning about “the shareholders”, they’re losing out faster than you.
Overall retail growth is a pretty good macroeconomic indicator and, because it’s also a major employer of young and entry level, a good indicator of problems yet to come.
With the cost of living as it is, were they really surprised? A huge proportion of the population are deciding between heating and eating right now.
My family and I are in the fortunate enough circumstance to be able to afford to buy every other family member a gift if we wanted (though we’d definitely feel the hit), but we all decided we don’t need random extra stuff and whatever stuff we may need we are all grown up enough to sort it out ourselves, so we did secret santa with a £10 limit and a lean towards using charity shops. That went for both mine and my wife’s side of the family and as a couple we spent a total of £25 on Christmas gifts. This obviously ignores any extra or special food that would have cost more than a usual weekly shop. Should we feel compelled to consume more just because the high street is going to cry about it?
I don’t understand why this would come as a shock. It’s inevitable. More and more people prefer to shop online, costs for brick and mortar shops are forever increasing at an alarming rate, minimum wage increases, people having less disposable income than they used too as COVID savings dry up.
It’s only a matter of time before it’s dead completely in my opinion. It’s a sorry state for the workers in particular because they likely have very little qualifications and will be unable to find similar jobs once high street retail completely collapses (at least clothes shops and the like, supermarkets will probably stay open).
This Xmas I asked for no presents, apart from one or two inexpensive consumables.
I have everything I need and money to get things as and when I need them.
Still got a pile of junk I will never use, that probably cost a fair bit of money. It’s such a waste.
Xmas just needs to be about a few decorations and having a big meal with family imo.
People acting surprised when companies look to maximise revenues/profits. Like that isn’t the whole purpose of capitalism.
It’s almost like the uk public doesn’t care about the profit line. Shame on us /s/
With disposable income at its lowest and prices still rising, this shouldn’t be shocking to anyone
Case in point: Tesco
We conveniently removed numerous Clubcard offers right before Christmas and New Year’s Eve only to immediately return them afterwards.
Don’t know if it played a big role, but definitely relevant
It’s all a big equation. Its not just high prices, or that prices are even necessarily high, it’s high relative to disposable income, which for most is lagging due to chronically stagnanting wages and “half” of a pay packet by default going towards housing costs, never mind letting off online giants like Amazon on so many things. Every other industry and person is indirectly paying for the dominant abusers, whether they’re individuals, companys or markets.
people are finally realising they only need to buy stuff when they actually need to, not because a company has a sales target to hit.
Raise prices, year in year. Pay shareholders more year on year, don’t increase staff pay don’t improve quality of products. Yeah I wonder why.
Over the summer I decided to do some shopping. Went into a Levi store. They didn’t have my size. I’m average UK height, healthy bmi, how did they not have my size!?!? Ended up buying online
As capital has gradually been moved from states to oligarchs over the last fifty years, there’s less in the real economy. This will continue until we reclaim wealth from the mega-wealthy.
The crazy part to all of this is the relentless pressure placed on companies to increase profits on a yearly basis. If a company is making a profit of say £500m, then why the pressure to increase this to £600m the next year? The corporate greed from corporate shareholders is to blame as is the corrupt way the stock markets are manipulated to “punish” companies if “profits don’t meet expectations.” There is a desperate need for a more holistic approach to how stock markets are operated and how company performance is measured.
But it’s still growing year on year. If businesses weren’t obsessed with “line go up” then they could just simply exist and continue making enough money
A lot of people I know were buying their christmas presents from temu and Sheen, so what usually would go into our economy is going into china maybe?
High Street shopping is so intertwined with every facet of UK life that we’re failing to see the wood for the trees.
Want to buy from a small company? Want to buy something specific? Want a good price? It can all be done online. The high street as a shopping destination serves only two functions now; 1) A day out, 2) Rent and rates payments for the council and landlords, and 3) The occasional urgent purchase or genuine perusal. These things can in most cases be untangled from the high street and we’d be a better country for it.
Super high prices for clothes on top of higher energy bills/ rent or mortgage rates. For example I wanted to get some new trousers which would’ve cost me £30 5 years ago now is £45 . Rather go on Vinted or a charity and find the same pair for a lot cheaper .