Getting inventory levels wrong can easily happen within the retail industry, but it can be very damaging. Too little inventory and stockouts mean lost revenue and dissatisfied customers. Too much and precious capital is tied up unnecessarily and expensively before the inevitable discounting wreaks havoc with gross margins and adversely affects the bottom line. Taken to extremes, excessive inventory can
For the overwhelming majority of retailers, the festive season is make or break. Christmas and New Year 2024 may have delivered surprisingly buoyant top-line revenues, given the consumer cost-of-living crisis, but profitability was another matter. The result has been another crop of high-profile failures, including Ted Baker, Matchesfashion, the Body Shop and FarFetch. Retailers account for 9% of all UK
The retail sector is crucial to the UK economy. It generates 6% of our GDP, receives a third of all consumer spending and employs 2.9m people (around 10% of all employment). Yet, it accounts for 9% of insolvencies and, as our latest sector report identifies, a further worrying decline in its overall financial health in recent months. Just at this
Manufacturing was once the bedrock of the economy and the source of the UK’s rise to economic superpower status in the 18th and 19th centuries. Since Margaret Thatcher unceremoniously re-shaped the economic landscape in the 1980s, the sector has shrunk from 25% of GDP in 1979 to 16% in 1990 and to just 9% now. In the process it has
It’s impossible to overstate the importance of the service sector to the modern UK economy. According to research by the House of Commons Library, it represents 81% of UK economic output and provides 83% of our employment. The service sector includes retail, financial services, public sector activities, business administration, hospitality, leisure and cultural businesses. The S&P Global/CIPS Purchasing Managers’ Index
The UK economy appears to be on a slow upward trajectory in 2024 after a rocky start and on the back of a tough business landscape in 2023. We hope this trend continues and improves as UK business owners desperately need some stability and growth. Delving deeper into April’s stats, there was mixed news with a pleasant surprise in the
