Do the British Retail Consortium (BRC) include Internet sale or just the High Street Stores?
The high street is a lot more complex than the narrow range of figures released from BRC. Everyone knows that – so it’s not like they can cause negative effects. The BRC is made up of very large retailers, so the sales figures from 3 or 4 big chains can dominate the actual result. It’s like when the press keep reporting the sales of John Lewis (and making out that it’s an indication of the high street) – It’s ONE chain. Whether they had a good or bad christmas is irrelevent. I think possibly you’ve attached too much importance to the figures of the BRC. If you were thinking of going into retail and opening a chain you wouldn’t rely on the data from BRC – you would do independant research on the demographics of the area you’re opening in, you would also research footfall levels, and you would look at the type of local businesses surrounding and try to find out the turnover level within those stores. So I don’t think the BRC is important and I don’t think anything they say has a knock-on
