29th December 2018
Unofficial retail data? Be very sceptical
Early in December, Mike Ashley, the owner of Britain’s Sports Direct sportswear chain and the Newcastle United football club described retail trading in November as “the worst on record, unbelievably...
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28th December 2018
Britain’s “Worst retail November on record ” wasn’t
Though media still quote Mike Ashley on November sales, the Office of National Statistics reported the fourth highest ever annual growth on December 20.
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19th September 2018
Are we really facing total retail collapse? Or have too many retailers just been misguided?
An awful lot of people are telling us retail's collapsing - or at least fleeing to the internet. Among recent front-page horrors have been Sears in the US hinting it’s...
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1st June 2018
M&S admit: it’s too fixated on fashion
Announcing its annual results on May 23, Marks & Spencer publicly agreed with what its older customers have been saying for years: it's too fixated with fashion. Slide 9 at...
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28th March 2018
Why no-one’s buying clothes any more: The introduction
No-one's buying clothes any more for much the same reason voters are disenchanted. What I originally wrote for publication after the 2016 UK Brexit referendum more or less explains...
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28th March 2018
Why voters got unhappy about global supply chains: what I said in 2016
Here's an article I first published in August 2016 (between the UK's Brexit referendum and America's Trump election), after reading someone else's commentary. I believed at the time that Robert...
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27th March 2018
Does Britain’s Brexit climbdown explain why no-one’s buying clothes anymore?
21 months ago, I excitedly wrote about the implications of Britain's Brexit vote to leave the EU. On March 19, the UK and EU agreed a provisional transition deal on...
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