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Continuing the pattern of the year, the retail world is still a bit gloomy.
The high street continues to suffer retail losses, as Faucet Inns’ Nordic-inspired restaurant group KuPP entered in to administration with the closure of two sites, and Saltrock Surfwear was acquired by Crew Clothing in a pre-pack deal saving 25 stores. Many other retailers teeter on the edge, not helped by the anticipated rise in business rates that is to come.
However, as the summer sun gives into autumn, there is some better news to be had;
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Instagram has unveiled two updates to its retail offer: expanding the Shopping function into Stories and introducing Shopping to the Explore tab, helping to fuel online shopping
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According to Visa UK’s Consumer Spending Index, household spending rose 0.4% in August up from a 0.9% drop a in July, buoyed by back to school spending and continued good weather
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The restaurant industry is starting to pick up once again after a troublesome two months of extreme hot weather led to dwindling sales, according to Coffer Peach Business Tracker analysis. Collective like-for-likes at managed pubs, the main benefactors of the warm climate, rose by 0.2% against August last year. Meanwhile restaurants experienced a year-on-year uptick of 1.4%
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The UK womenswear market grew by 3.2% to £28.4bn in 2017 according to a research by Mintel, which surveyed over 1000 female shoppers from the UK aged 16 or more. Mintel also forecasts British women to spend £29.4b in clothing this year, and the sales of womenswear to grow by 14% between 2018 and 2022
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The government has decided to adopt ‘Agent of Change’ principles into planning legislation in a move that will support longstanding bars, pubs and clubs facing noise complaint issues from new developments in their area
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New findings from Ipsos show that more overseas shoppers buy from the UK than any other European country. “Cross-border merchant research” on behalf of payment provider PayPal found that 14% of global online shoppers had bought from the UK in the last 12 months, making the UK the largest online exporter in Europe
And finally, three out of four retail transactions are now made by card according to new data from the British Retail Consortium. Its latest annual Payments Survey reveals that more than three quarters of transactions now are made digitally. Cash payments dropped by 1% year-on-year, now accounting for just 22% of the UK’s total retail sales, which rose 4.3% to £366bn in 2017.
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