Retail: Difficult choices for expensive footwear
Germiston, Gauteng, SA - We’re finding trade very tricky and not good at all. Prices have become so exorbitant, and you must downgrade all the time. But people aspire to better end merchandise and brands, so you lose that segment if you’re not careful. You can’t offer copies – they know what they want. To be a player, you must be up-to-date.
To sell expensive footwear you have to offer credit. Lay bye doesn’t seem to be good enough for the premium brands. However, we do stock Palladium, and we do quite well with that, I must say.
But in general, consumers have less money, and they have more people they have to support. If they can’t afford what they really want, the business just doesn’t happen.
We have tried to modernise our business and our marketing, but if business is dead, you can’t beat it into life.
Thus far this year, we’re quite a bit down on last year, so December isn’t looking very promising.
