Black Friday: Shops emptier than expected as online sales hit a new record

A disappointed Adam Lusher queues with just five others outside Currys

Lonely aisle: fewer than expected turned up to Lea Valley’s Tesco Extra, north London (PA)

This, surely, was the place to be: Currys Megastore in Croydon, south London – an outlet which, according to local legend, shifted £500,000 worth of stock in last year’s Black Friday sales frenzy.

It was already known that the store would be selling 49-inch TVs for as little as £279, on a while-stocks-last and “when they’re gone they’re gone” basis.

But by arriving at 5.30am, half an hour before the doors officially opened, The Independent had guaranteed itself a ringside seat to enjoy the great American – and now the great British – tradition of gathering, the day after Thanksgiving, for a punch-up over a plasma TV.

The Currys car park looked promising. It contained a police squad car, positioned strategically close to the shop entrance. The crowd, however, shivering in the pre-dawn darkness, may have consisted of just about five people, but it did contain Chris Newland, 21, and his girlfriend Asha Reece, 19.

He wanted a deal on a 32-inch Samsung smart TV. She didn’t want anything. “I’m the muscle,” she explained.

But alas for the spirit of British bulldog belligerence, the Croydon-based drama student was polite, charming and joking.

Everyone was charming, distressingly so. And Mr Newland and Ms Reece didn’t so much run into Currys as stroll, at a leisurely pace. And as for wrestling anyone for the 32-inch TV, they didn’t buy it at all.

“It was the same price as normal,” explained Mr Newland. “I could have got a 42-inch for £300, but it would have been too big for my room.” They did say something about maybe going to Argos later, but it was scant consolation.

The Independent exited Currys just in time to see the squad car leave, slowly, without its sirens blaring. It was an ominous sign of things to come.

Across the nation, the newswires hummed with forlorn tales of sanity and good behaviour. In some places, reporters hoping for some early opening “madness” outnumbered responsible shoppers.

Asda, which provided one of last year’s undoubted highlights – two women wrestling over a TV in Wembley, north London – now produced a frankly pathetic performance, restricting itself to dropping the price of unleaded petrol and destroying all hope of telly-based brawling.

Yes, by about midday, some shops were experiencing queues, but of the wrong sort: orderly, well disciplined. And the retailers just didn’t care.

Customers may have stayed away from the shops and gone online because they were at work, because it was more convenient or perhaps because they wanted to avoid the expected crushes and fighting. But that just set the UK on course for the biggest online shopping day in its history, with retail analyst Experian-IMRG predicting online spending would hit £1.07bn, 32 per cent more than 2014’s Black Friday sales of £810m.

Some retailers (Very.co.uk) chirruped about selling a games console every four seconds online, and the only crushes of furious shoppers were virtual. The Argos website reportedly slowed down noticeably under the pressure of more than 2.5 million online visits, but it was hardly the same as witnessing a press of real, furious flesh-and-blood customers.

About the most confrontational it got was Tesco issuing a rapid rebuttal of claims that its website was slow.

As for Currys, which in that darkness before dawn had seemed to offer such bright hopes: “We’re experiencing unprecedented online Black Friday demand,” said a spokeswoman. “A 2,900 per cent increase on online orders compared to this time last week, eight sales per second combining online and in-store, 30 TVs sold online every minute...”

There had, she said delicately, been no “in-store incidents”. “Oh gosh, yes, that’s pleasing. We don’t want any punch-ups.”

This country is going to hell in a handcart.

While stocks last: retailers’ figures

Currys

The electrical goods chain reported its website sold 30 TVs a minute on 27 November. Vacuums, iPads, and TVs were also popular.

Very.co.uk

The fashion and homeware website had more than 500,000 visits by 9am on 27 November, having launched its sales at midnight. The most popular key search so far is “consoles” followed by “TV”.

Argos

The retailer reported more than 2.5 million visits to its website by the afternoon of 27 November, with numbers rising by the hour. Popular deals include discounts on iPads, PS4 and Xbox consuls.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals