Retailers pray for St Stephen's miracle

RETAIL SALES:IRISH RETAILERS are pinning their hopes on having a bumper sales period from St Stephen's Day after a "perfect storm" of grim news from the bailout, the Budget and the bad weather meant an anticipated December consumer spree never materialised.

Retailers have experienced their worst December on record, figures released yesterday by Retail Excellence Ireland have shown. In particular, the “buy for me” market has been crippled by the bad weather and economic fears.

Many are, however, optimistic there is a resulting pent-up demand for consumption and hope next week will mark an upturn in their fortunes.

Continuing a tradition which began last year, many of the State’s biggest retailers will open their doors on St Stephen’s Day.

The Dundrum Town Centre sale starts at 10am on December 26th and a centre spokesman said the majority of the shops, including House of Fraser and Harvey Nichols, would open for business.

The Clery’s sale starts at the same time and among the headline grabbing items in the Dublin city centre store are a bed marked down from €1,799 to a single euro, a bookcase, that normally commands €1,399, selling for €99 and a netbook computer at €99, down from €329.

On the other side of Dublin’s O’Connell Street at Arnotts there will also be some big-ticket items available but for many the biggest draw will be X-Factor contestant Mary Byrne. She will perform live outside the store at 9.30am before the doors open at 10am.

In addition to the singalong, Arnotts is enticing bargain hunters with 10 leather sofa beds for €299, down from €1,000.

Brown Thomas in Dublin will be first out of the sales blocks when it opens its doors at 9am on St Stephen’s Day while BT outlets in Galway, Cork and Limerick all start their sales an hour later.  Debenhams in Cork, Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Kildare all begin their sales on December 26th and a day later it is the turn of Next and Marks and Spencer stores nationwide, with the former opening at 5am.