I had a couple of hours to kill between meetings with customers in London yesterday so enjoyed a walk down Oxford Street. I took several photographs of various shop windows and displays that caught my attention and I’ll be sharing these with you over the next few days.
It was quite a sunny warm day for November. Nice to see the Arthur Christmas lights hanging above Oxford Circus. Oxford Street itself is undergoing a lot of building work at the moment basically the whole length from Tottenham Court Road and the Centre Point building down to Marble Arch. I can see it being really packed as it starts to get busy over the next few weeks.
These cardboard radio and speakers in John Lewis caught my attention. The Radio is £20 and the speakers are £12. In addition to being a radio you can also plug in your iPod / iPhone and use them as a speakers. It’s an ideal novelty gift for the boy who has everything. My husband would certainly love one of these in his study.
After walking the length of Oxford Street it was up to the top floor of John Lewis for some quick festive refreshments in the form of their Cranberry Loaf and a coffee.
Lots more great gift ideas to follow over the next few days, in the meantime if you’ve spotted something great please let me know.
Tags: Cardboard Radio, John Lewis, oxford street
Posted by admin on Oct 15, 2011 in
News and Comment 
Just 70 days until Christmas or just 11 weekends. I had to go shopping today and again was quite surprised at how busy it was. Just about every shop now have their initial Christmas displays out. I popped into John Lewis and picked up their Christmas Brochure. I settled down with this and a cup of coffee while enjoying the sun in conservatory. They have some nice things in there this year. In the electrical department they are featuring a number of speakers which are compatible with Apple’s Airplay wireless music streaming system. This allows you to wirelessly stream music from you iPod/iPhone/iPad etc to the hi-fi quality speaker unit. In the children’s toys the classic Etch A Sketch brought back happy memories. It’s obviously aimed more at the Mums & Dads than the children.
On the way home I had to make a quick stop off at B&Q and they had their Christmas display out but by then I was running far to late to stop and look.
Tags: Etch A Sketch, John Lewis
Posted by admin on Sep 17, 2009 in
News and Comment A number of retailers are increasingly confident of having good sales this Christmas and will be avoiding the temptation to start sales before Christmas and won’t be discounting products this year.
Today Selfridges revealed soaring sales in their Christmas and toy departments. They said sales in their Panto themed Christmas shop, which opened on August 8, have jumped 52% year-on-year, with the average transaction value rising 33%. Mean while John Lewis managing director Andy Street has forecast that there will be less high street discounting during the crucial festive period. They expect that retailers will have carefully balanced their stock with the likely demand and therefore there won’t be surplus stock to be cleared through discounting.
It seems most likely that any sales or discounting will wait until Christmas Day online and Boxing Day in stores so that customers can take full advantage of the lower prices before VAT goes back up to 17.5% in the New Year.
The advice is to workout what gifts you need to buy and then buy them early or during October rather than leave it until the last minute expecting to pick up bargins. The chances are that with retails playing it safe after the recession popular gifts will sell out before Christmas, rather than them being left with stock for the New Year sales.
Tags: Boxing Day, Christmas, Gifts, Januaray Sales, John Lewis, Selfridges, VAT
