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Birmingham’s not sold out
It's summer sale time and our resident retail expert Karl McKeever of Visual Thinking has been to the UK's second city Birmingham, to see how retailers were maximising the opportunity to clear stocks and make way for their new autumn ranges.
It's been a peculiar summer - notable for its eerie silences. The first came after the roar of the English Lions was quickly silenced and the next after Mr. Murray left Wimbledon in a repeat fashion. I found another here in Birmingham's Bullring and the central shopping streets, as I came to review the summer sales (5th July) and find less than half of the stores in sale mode.
This isn't a bad thing and in fact puts a spring in my step - as the lack of sales, or delayed start for many, could mean that UK retail is slowly returning to normality after the painful recession, which for many stores meant that sale mode was more frequent than normal mode!
That said, many of the stores that had gone into sale didn't disappoint and I was encouraged to see various examples of imaginative and impactful POS and VM delivery throughout the day. This point on sale design and creativity might seem somewhat inconsequential to some. However, sale windows are just as important (and sometimes even more so) at securing the attraction of shoppers, and do so in a way that is right for the brand. A poor execution can be potentially ineffective for generating consumer traffic and clearing stock, or indeed harmful to wider customer perceptions.
Amongst the highlights; Vero Moda had used giant hanging sale tickets around the necks of its window display mannequins, a technique also used by French Connection. JD Sports used some electronic POS for its sale activity in-store, which was effective, given that it probably had a lot of England team merchandise to clear following our dismal results on the field. COS used a stylish printer's blocks POS design on giant billboards and achieved strong standout. Gap's use of orange and green was an unconventional design move away from the generally accepted and tried and tested red and white format. Mamas & Papas featured a smart and effective sale scheme, using a combination of POS and 3D building blocks in orange and white - reflecting the increased use of orange as a sale colour for this season.
Overall the average reduction amount advertised from the shops in sale varied between 50% and 70%. Oasis, Warehouse, House of Fraser and Zara had extra signs stating "further" reductions - suggesting their sales had started early. It was noticeable that there was much more menswear than ladieswear on sale (Debenhams, House of Fraser and BHS), however this is maybe not so surprising, given that men have been holed up in front of their TV's for three weeks watching the football!
I was also surprised to see that House of Fraser and New Look had a significant selection of their holiday shop items in the sale. In the case of House of Fraser, it was also discounting outdoor living items, which should be flying off the shelves at this time of year - such as gardening equipment, candles and picnicware. Here too lies evidence that the lure of balmy summer evenings spent on the patio has been sacrificed for a night in front of the telly. What a shame the World Cup can't be planned to fit in better with our generally 'not so baking' summers to help our retailers more.
Selfridges - a real flagship of the city, did surprisingly little to promote its sale in the windows, but there was more evidence in-store with plenty of hanging POS successfully reusing its well established slogans: "It's almost free"; "It's such a good investment I'd better get there" and "So many beautiful things and so little time" etc.
I could be forgiven for thinking that the lack of stores in sale was a good sign as high street giants M&S, Next, Monsoon, jewellers Ernest Jones, River Island, USC and Urban Outfitters were not in sale. However, some of the hard sale techniques being employed by those that were in sale, showed that not all was rosy in Birmingham.
Internacionale was one retailer that was perhaps promoting itself a little too hard, with a noisy campaign of up to 75% off posters, plus buy-one-get-one-free offers. La Senza was, in my opinion, suffering from a pink POS overload, using garish 'up to 50%' sale signs all over the store. Add to this Clarks, which had discounted 'everything' and Blue Star's disturbingly titled "Emergency Sale!" - I wondered if some stores had tipped the balance just a little too much!
Surprisingly less full-on, but no less ineffective was Primark's sale POS. Here, only a small amount of POS was used confirming the limited amount of sale products in-store, perhaps hinting at Primark's likely strong performance for the season? H&M went big on its sale POS in the windows, but in-store the message lacked strong visibility on the sale products, making it difficult to find and leaving a deflated feeling when you eventually did.
The sale POS in the main was fairly standard and conventional with some stores making use of last year's posters. Zara is re-using its own POS for another time, which in today's financial and eco climate, could be commended, so long as its impact remains high with consumers.
In true retail 'if it ain't broke' style, red is still the sale colour - but for me it was the quirky variants used by Gap and Mamas & Papas that drew new eyes on the day. Posters in various forms were the bedrock of most sale POS campaigns, but it could be said that many showed poor imagination and design and were poorly applied with sloppy implementation standards.
Adopting tactics like those observed in Blue Star are not to be recommended (unless they are actually required!). Regardless of whatever people are buying, most people want to feel of confident about the retailer. Such dramatically worded sale posters could in fact be counterproductive and actually put people off buying, and helping to create even more trouble down the line.
On the whole I was surprised at how few retailers were in sale at this time. It seemed that the bigger stores such as M&S, Next etc. were 'under control' and probably holding out for the July pay packet. Debenhams' Blue Cross was perhaps the oddity in timing amongst its peers.
Smart retailers will always try to clear their stock in-season, to avoid a build-up of terminal stock, the headaches in logistics and additional costs this brings. Even with the effects of the recession, it was good to see many retailers delaying their sales and much less of the of excessive discounting we have recently seen.
The lack of sales in Birmingham are a reflection of the frequency of sale periods that we now have. No longer are mega crowd-pulling events held at the end of the season, but in-season reductions and 'little and often' offers/events are the new and smarter way for retailers to manage stock levels. The internet is also gaining in popularity for retailers to help boost sales on slow-selling items, or to create a promotion to stave off the need for more drastic action when lines fail to live up to expectations. But above all, the summer period affords retailers several bites of the cherry to tempt shoppers in-store: the August bank holiday, back-to-school offers and a holiday/tourist season that stretches over three months, all play their part in dragging out the sales for longer. It means brands will have to work even harder to launch their new season ranges with strong impact when the last of the red sale POS comes down.