Retail round up – The Friday papers
Morrisons ploughs ahead with farm,Hopes for improvement in financial crisis hit mens fashion market,City says housing recovery is in sight, Twitter breaks into web Top 40 as UKs fastest growing website…
The Telegraph
Wm Morrison is taking its vertical business model one step further with plans to farm 700 acres in Scotland.The supermarket has teamed up with the Scottish Agricultural College to open the Morrisons Farm at Dumfries House in East Ayrshire. “We are already very close to farmers, but we want to do more. This will give our relationship more depth,” said Marc Bolland, the chief executive of Morrisons. Full article.
The menswear market, hit hard in the global financial crisis, is unlikely to see a full recovery any time soon but as men seek a softer look for their wardrobes, experts say they are hopeful for signs of an improvement. Fashion has not been spared by the turmoil and with the financial sector hit hard, suit and tie sales have suffered the most in menswear, sector players say. “For sure (men’s fashion consumption has changed). Men’s clothing is down quite a lot … and men are going for a more soft look,” Gildo Zegna, CEO of Italian menswear brand Ermenegildo Zegna, said at Milan fashion week. Full article.
The Times
The housing market slump is close to ending, with prices set to bottom out later this year and begin rising again by 2011, the City is predicting.A growing majority of economists are calling the end of a housing crash that has so far wiped about a fifth, or more than £40,000 on average, off home values.A poll of economists by Reuters found a consensus that house prices will drop by 8 per cent this year — having so far fallen by about 3 per cent since January and by 16 per cent during the past year. Full article.
Twitter is the UK’s fastest growing website, breaking into the top 40 most visited sites in Britain for the first time. The micro-blogging site has seen a huge rise in popularity in recent months, experiencing a 22-fold increase in traffic in the past year, according to Hitwise, the internet analysts. Twitter is now the 38th most visited site in the UK. At the same time last year it was 969th. Full article.
