"There's going to be more than one sequel": independent fashion retailers react to Lockdown 2

The despair of independent retailers fighting for survival is rife, as England faces "Lockdown 2" come Thursday. Some retailers are faring better than others, but the fear of the unknown and further lockdowns is felt across the board.

Phil Goodfellow, co-owner, Northern Threads, South Shields

Phil Goodfellow

I’m quite pleased we’re going in to another lockdown because to be quite honest we’ve hardly done any trade in the last three weeks. It’s been almost worse being in Tier 2 in the North East, because people just don’t know what to do. We’ve been dead because people are that nervous about going out. Every bloodline has systematically been pulled from us. Football, concerts, stag nights and holidays all gone, eating out and pubs hit hard. Who’s buying designer clothes to sit around the house? I wouldn’t be.

What about online people say? Well, what about it? All the big brands have websites now. If you want to buy your dad a Boss polo shirt for Christmas you’ll type in Boss and who’s going to be number one on page one of your search? Boss, then Flannels, then Tessuti and so on – that’s the way it is. We’re on page six!

"We’re entitled to £1,300 with a grant. Don’t get me wrong, it’s better than nothing, but that doesn’t do much more than pay for the mortgage for a month."

Having said that, I’ve got the lads in now to give online a push and get the photography done to make sure the website looks the best it possibly can, as well as pushing Instagram so we’ve got what we can in place. Normally our second biggest weekend is the Black Friday weekend but now we can’t open. And I can’t believe they’re going to open the floodgates to town centres again on 2 December for the 23 days up to Christmas. That’s exactly what they don’t want to do.

We’re entitled to £1,300 with a grant. Don’t get me wrong, it’s better than nothing, but that doesn’t do much more than pay for the mortgage for a month.

Steve English, owner, Cooshti, Bristol

Steve English

Going in to Lockdown 2 is a nightmare, but I think it’s probably necessary. We’re just hoping our online business does what it did last time – it doubled. That should hopefully be enough to keep us through it. The grant this time isn’t as generous as the last one, so that will just about cover our rent. Online is going to be key. I’m just praying that, when they say it’s only going to be for four weeks, they mean it. That will at least buy us Christmas. If they extend it into to December it could be ruinous for a lot of people.

We’re now gearing up to increase our digital marketing, push our website and our click and collect service. Last time we had a lot of local orders come through as our regulars kept buying from us online so, hopefully, that will continue. As long as we can get our slice of the online pie then we’ll be alright, but I really want to be re-open in December because you get so much passing trade then. Online is always strong in December anyway, but it will take a lot to make up for the shop being closed.

"I’m just praying that, when they say it’s only going to be for four weeks, they mean it. That will at least buy us Christmas. If they extend it into to December it could be ruinous for a lot of people."

We’ve only been in Tier 1, so if we come back out in to Tier 1 again we’ll be okay, though our mayor of Bristol introduced a new thing called Tier 1-plus, which isn’t recognised by the government, but it was going to mean they had Covid marshals going around ensuring social distancing and so on. But all that is now out of the window because we’re all in the same boat again.

I think they probably should have acted sooner – like the science was telling them to, but at the same time I’m glad we got October under our belt, as it was pretty strong for us. There’s always a bit of dip mid-November anyway.

Since we re-opened from the last lockdown, our sales have been pretty much on a par with last year all the way through since 15 June. So, if we can re-open in December, hopefully it can bounce back that quickly and people will be confident enough to get out shopping again.

Kashif Qazi, owner, Utter Nutter, Romford

Kashif Qazi

My thoughts on Lockdown 2? I think there’s going to be more than a sequel. People don’t know what’s going to happen, everyone is shooting in the dark, so let’s see what happens.

When lockdown was eased last time, we went straight into a 30% Sale and we did extremely well. Then we went straight into a summer Sale and cleared all of our stock very comfortably. Since we’ve gone full-price we’ve been performing slightly above last year’s figures. It’s been very encouraging. We’ve had customers coming in buying products for Christmas as normal, in fact buying a little bit more. We’ve had a lot of cash purchases for some strange reason. I can’t quite understand that, but then a lot of our customers are in the construction business, and they get paid in cash.

A lot of our suppliers cut down our deliveries because of the production difficulties they’ve had, but we’ve managed to get stock from other suppliers to balance it up. Tommy Hilfiger reduced our pre-booked order by 70%, which was quite incredible. But we managed to buy more from Boss and other brands. Boss were, as usual, an extremely efficient German machine – they made everything and sent everything as had been ordered.

"We will be offering click and collect, as we normally put our stuff on Instagram anyway. We’ll be increasing that every day, because all of my staff still want to come in – they don’t want to sit at home."

We were happy and chugging along nicely, and looking forward to a strong November, but now we’re going to close in November and we don’t trade online. Obviously now that is an issue, but one of the main reasons for that is when you say to brands that you’re taking them online, they treat that as a separate standalone store, and they then increase your budget. With the competition that’s going on online, a 20% discount is quite normal and people are reducing even 30-40%, but that’s your margin. It doesn’t make sense.

We will be offering click and collect, as we normally put our stuff on Instagram anyway. We’ll be increasing that every day, because all of my staff still want to come in – they don’t want to sit at home. So, we’ll be busy taking photographs and pushing that side. We’re hoping we will be able to re-open on 2 December. They’ll be so much pressure on the government that they’ll have no choice – even if we have to go into a further lockdown in February. There’s a high possibility of that. You can’t take Christmas away from people – they’ll be riots.