ReThink Productivity Podcast
In this exciting podcast, Simon Hedaux from ReThink Productivity shares his insights and strategies for improving productivity and efficiency in the retail and hospitality industries. With the help of clients, partners, and the ReThink team, Simon covers everything from measuring and tracking productivity to developing and implementing effective strategies.
Whether you're a business owner, manager, or employee, this podcast is a must-listen for anyone who wants to learn how to get more done and improve their bottom line.
Here's what you can expect to learn:
- How to measure and track productivity
- Proven strategies for improving efficiency and reducing waste
- How to create a culture of productivity and innovation
- Tips for motivating and engaging your team
- Real-world examples of how other businesses have used ReThink Productivity to achieve success
Don't miss out on this opportunity to learn from the experts and get ahead of the curve with your own business.
ReThink Productivity Podcast
Footfall Insights October 2024
Diane Wehrle CEO at Rendle Intelligence and Insights joins Simon for their monthly chat about footfall trends and shopping behaviours. They cover:
- Footfall trends from August to September 2024
- Outlook for the next few months
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Welcome to the Productivity Podcast. Diane Whirl, founder at Rendall Intelligence and Insight, is back for our monthly chat around footfall and shopping trends Hi, di.
Speaker 2:Hi Simon, how are?
Speaker 1:you doing.
Speaker 2:I'm good thanks. How about you?
Speaker 1:Good, yeah, good, if I sound slightly drunk, I'm not. I've had a fill in this morning and I'm still a bit numb, so we'll persevere. But hopefully I'm not slurring my words.
Speaker 1:I can't hear anything. You sound fine to me. Good, that's fine, and my tooth feels better anyway, so all good. Um, so we're in august to september. We're kind of heading turn that corner into the. The leaves falling off the trees, the night's drawing in, I would say the weather getting worse. But it's not exactly anything previously this year to base it on. That's been good. So we had an okay conversation last time. I, I think, didn't we. From July to August it looked all right. It was looking relatively positive, heading in Lots of rumblings. Clearly Budget's on its way. As we record, I think in a couple of weeks' time Weather's not been great. We touch on mortgages and stuff in previous episodes and that next tranche of people. So what are you seeing since we talked last into that? August to September people.
Speaker 2:So what, what are you seeing since we talked last into that? August to september, right well, as a time of recording the uh, inflation and um sales from ons haven't yet come out, but um, we've got footfall into stores and we have domestic spend in high streets. So football in stores. First, um looked remarkably robust overall. Sensor matic and the BRC reported an increase of 3.3% annually in September, which seems brilliant. But when you look under the covers a little bit, the vast majority of that was driven through retail parks and shopping centres. That saw big uplifts, particularly retail parks over 7% increase in retail parks. High streets, conversely, saw an increase of just 0.9% in footfall going into stores in high streets. So very modest increase.
Speaker 2:And that really dovetails with the consumer confidence results that came out from GFK in September, which dipped pretty significantly from minus 13. So they have an index score and their index score is minus 13. So they have an index score and their index scores minus 13 in august to minus 20 in september. So people clearly feeling less confident. And looking at the data actually and so I'm wrapping that a bit um, it's very clear that what people are feeling is a lack of confidence around what's happening over the forthcoming 12 months. So they're talking about, you know, the the their confidence around the economic situation over the next year is what's really been sort of shaken a little bit.
Speaker 2:There have been little wobble in people's how they view their own personal finances, but it's mainly around what they feel is going to happen over the next year and there's been a lot of stuff around the government talking the economy down and I think that's really permeated through to consumer confidence and then also into spending, because beclair have um their results, which is spending in uk high streets dipped by six and a half percent annually in september versus a dip of 3.1 percent in august, with um a big hit on food and drink. So hospitality took a big hit in september um, and that will be for a variety of reasons partly because of consumer confidence and you know if you don't need to go out to eat or drink when you're feeling a bit vulnerable financially, you don't have to um but also the weather. You know we had a week of torrential rain during september. That really would have put a lot of people off going out to eat and drink if you don't have to go.
Speaker 1:I know it did me um so but there were drops across the board really, um in high street spend, so it was pretty, you know, a pretty disappointing month really so this could be, I suppose, a reflection of the general election to some degree, if you follow the pattern the euphoria, I suppose, in brackets, of changing colours of parties, and then the realism that actually not much changed and the challenges still remain the same, and like, say, maybe there's a degree of talking down the economy for what's to come at the next election budget and probably the one after that yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm sure you know a lot of people. Do you know whether you start in a new job and you tell your new employer that actually things are a lot worse than you thought they were when you come in, so it makes your job a little bit easier. The government maybe adopted the same approach, you know? Oh, it's much worse than we thought it was. This is awful, and I know I was listening to a variety of news programs, all of which were talking about the impact of talking the economy down. So clearly that was a factor and you know, if you listen to enough of those, it's going to impact how you feel about spending.
Speaker 2:I mean, house prices are continuing to increase, which is always a strong sign of people's confidence in their finances, because actually, you know, people move for new jobs. They move because they feel a little bit wealthy. They move because they feel confident they're not going to get made redundant. So that's still improving, which is a good sign. But people are putting their long-term financial assets and future first, really, and that's reflected in the fact that the savings ratio is 11%, whereas that's more than double where it was back a few years ago. People are clearly trying to recover their position from the last couple of years. Because inflation has been high, mortgages have increased enormously for a lot of people, so they're saving a lot more. So if you save a lot more, you just simply can't spend it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's those other economic factors, isn't there? There's a mass exodus of people moving out of being landlords because of some of the tax implications and we talked about said before in the previous podcast, I think it was is it November the next tranche of people come off their fixed rate deals?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and then next spring as well. So there's, you know, it's happening in stages.
Speaker 1:But, on a positive note, we've got Halloween at the end of October, so from events point of view, we kind of hit this run now, don't we? We've got Halloween, which, I have to say, most of the retail shops I've been in seems less of a thing this year.
Speaker 1:They've all got their suites or their costumes, but much, much less into it. Christmas early. We've got all the price establishments of your heroes and your celebrations, boxes and stuff that will be reduced down later. So we move from end of october clocks go um back, yeah, back is it back?
Speaker 1:um, halloween, then into november, where we start to line up uh, black friday I'll call it week or month now and cyber monday. Then pretty much straight from there we're into Christmas and who knows when sales will land. If it's true to form, it's kind of Black Friday starts to sale, doesn't it in some degree, certainly in fashion world, if there's high stock ratios.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, for all the data is showing that it's Black Friday that kicks off Christmas trading, and data from Beauclair shows it very clearly. When you look at week on week change in spend in the high street, nothing much happens before Black Friday and then you get this big surge in Black Friday week and then, following Black Friday, you get a constant week-on-week increase in spend all the way through to Christmas. And this year, of course, we've got a couple of extra trading days and they're the peak trading days. So we've got Christmas Day is Wednesday this year versus Monday last year. So we've got Super Saturday and then followed by Manic Monday. So the Monday is the 23rd and that's typically the busiest trading day, busier than Christmas Eve, and so we might well see some benefits to retailers to having a full trading week plus an additional day. So at least an additional day if people travel Christmas Eve. So that bodes well really, and also in terms of where I'm forecasting we sit versus last year, last year was a bit of a washout around Christmas.
Speaker 2:The year up to the fourth quarter last year was actually reasonably good. We were still coming out of COVID, we were seeing year-on-year increases in spend, and then quarter four. It all seemed to come together in this perfect storm of financial challenge and people just railed everything back and it was a really poor quarter and spend was down year-on-year in each of the three months. So just on the basis of that, I'm anticipating a small increase in spend this year in each of the three months in quarter four.
Speaker 1:So, fingers crossed that still comes to pass. Yeah, well, lots to play for. As ever, it's a it's a buyer's market, isn't it? So the challenge is to the hospitality companies, the retailers, the online organizations to make the, the offers, attractive enough to tempt that valuable pound that we've saved or we're holding on to. Weather will play a big part again. I'm sure it's typically been wet, hasn't it? And dark, which isn't maybe the best for high streets, better for those regional shopping centres and retail parks which has come through in your figures. Snow seems to be, in that really hard frost, almost a thing of the past, whether that's just the last couple of years and we'll see something different this year. But, yeah, I think, all to play for.
Speaker 1:I've seen some great shops when I've been out lately. Some great supermarkets set up, getting ready to set up fashion um general stores. So you know everybody's. You can feel that kind of energy and buzz starting to come. Let's get halloween out of the way and, um, yeah, all to play for. It's going to be tough, but I suppose when's it, when's it not? Um absolutely.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, christmas is always a challenging trading period and I've just worked with al marketing on their sort of golden quarter shopper survey and you know, interestingly, 81 percent of consumers are saying they're going to spend the same or more than they did last year, which is actually about 11 percent more than the people who said that the previous year. So you know things, shoppers aren't. It's not all shoppers that are feeling the pinch. You know.
Speaker 1:There are shoppers that are anticipating spending more, which is great yeah, it's interesting that I don't personally, I suppose I don't think about. I have an eye on what I'm buying, but I wouldn't necessarily be able to tell you what I spent last year and what I'm going to spend this year. It's more about finding the right present, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think people, I think people, a lot of people look at it. So you know, should I? How much should I? Can I manage to spend this year? And they will probably remember what they bought people last year and thought, oh, I can't stretch to that this year. I bought people last year and thought, oh, I can't stretch to that this year, I'll do a bit more imaginative or buy something else, um, so you know, I think people have an idea of what their budgets are likely to be at this point, whether or not they've actually spent them yet. Some people have, obviously, but unlike me, I do my christmas shopping pretty late in the year yeah, yeah, I'm, I look for the deals.
Speaker 1:So I'm yeah, loads, buy, not quite that late. I fell foul of that when I worked at Boots and you see everybody the guys that have been in the pub who then come in and buy a bottle of perfume, just as you're about to shut the doors when we have to work out in stores which is always entertaining, but, yeah, not quite that. But, like everybody else, you know you're canny, aren't you? You want a deal. You kind of know that full price probably isn't a thing, but that's, I suppose, the challenge. Then, back to those people selling and find me something that's unique, that's personalized or that's different to part my money with, rather than just the run-of-the-mill stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, interestingly, the AR Marketing Service come up with some really quite interesting findings and they looked at what Gen Zs looked at what Gen Z priorities are and actually a lot of those guys want traditional experiences and they prefer shopping for gifts in store. Nearly around 94% of them said they actually want to go in store, which is great news for stores Fantastic. But quite a few two-thirds are going to say they want to spend on gift experiences and this is the whole thing around experience and self-care, isn't it?
Speaker 2:So things are shifting around what people are looking to buy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and that generation, like you say, it's less about the more environmentally conscious and you know if you're buying something that's physical, is it going to be used or sit there or thrown away, recycle whatever. Or sit there, or thrown away, recycle whatever. And I think probably that whole COVID period has taught us that experiential stuff lives long in the memory, doesn't it, rather than physical stuff. So that's, yeah, clearly a market we'll keep an eye on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and also a lot of younger people now are renting, not buying, of course, because they can't afford to and they don't want too much stuff, because it means they have to carry it from place to place, so and they haven't got the room for it if they're sharing, flat sharing or renting, you know. So that that all goes into experiences, doesn't it?
Speaker 1:absolutely brilliant. We'll pause there. Um, next month we'll cover off, hopefully, if we've got the figures where we got to in halloween, and then we can got a couple of exciting months coming up then with all the activity yeah, super brilliant. Thanks di speak to you soon.
Speaker 2:Thanks, simon, take care.
