“Spring Report 2018”

Expert Eye with

John Shepherd

Owner and Managing Director of Partridges

• Is our café a hero or a villain?
• “The battle for optimism and morale in retail”
• “Sustainable confusion”
• “What to do about January?”
• “Is the Christmas boom sustainable?”

"It was the winter of our discount eggs” would be an apt description of spring and Easter this year. (My sincerest apologies to the Bard by the way)

That obscure adage of “an early Easter means sales have a seizure” once again proved to be true in 2018. This year Easter took place at the height of winter with temperatures at the lowest point for many years.

Comparing our sales this year to last year for the four-day holiday weekend reveals that we were 16.8% down. In fact, April sales as a whole were 9.9% down which is the sharpest monthly year-on-year drop we have had in many a decade. Our customer count was 11.3% down as well. In the middle of a few nights recently I have wondered whether Lidl opened a pop-up shop nearby selling Easter eggs.

However, April had a sudden change of personality when it turned into a heatwave between the 18th and 21st of the month. During this period our sales rose by 10.8% compared to the year before and it was a pleasant reminder of normal retailing. Thank goodness for that! Although, sadly a few discounted Easter Eggs lingered in the shop for an embarrassing number of days after the bank holiday.

Looking back to January, it seems incredible that the year actually got off to a good start. It was the best January according to recent records and sales were 3.9% up. February was down by 1.8% but was boosted by our Chinese New Year celebration, when we clawed back some revenue under benign weather conditions. March was down by 1.2%, and considering Beasts from the East etc this may not look too bad a result.

However, the month contained five Saturdays whereas last year only had four and Saturdays are the best day of the week for us, bringing up to 50% higher sales than a weekday. It was therefore payback time in April when last year there were five Saturdays and this year only four, and our sales in 2018 were dramatically down. The one bright spark remains online sales which continue unabated by unpleasant weather, and on the contrary grew by several hundred per cent during the first three months of the year. Albeit on a proportionately much smaller turnover to the main shop.

So what about the future in 2018? May is traditionally our third busiest month of the year in a close battle with October. It also ushers in the second busiest quarter of the year after Christmas. During the next 12 weeks we have the Chelsea Flower Show, a royal wedding, a cup final featuring a local team, a new born royal baby, Wimbledon, Ascot and, dare I say it, the World Cup to put everyone in a positive frame of mind. We are even launching a new gin, Chelsea Flower 2, to assist with mood enhancement and already have an encouraging number of pre-orders online.

Champagne, gin, smoked salmon, cheese and charcuterie hopefully all now take centre stage as I nervously scan the long term weather forecast for the summer.

My friends in the trade often tell me to stop talking about the weather and start talking to customers. I have tried that but we always seem to end up talking about the weather anyhow. It might be a British thing. This year, scarcely surprisingly, spring has sprung sparingly for speciality foods.