Amidst the doom and gloom among retailers, there has been a glimmer of hope this week as online sports merchant UKSoccershop announced record sales for the month of November - a 12% increase on the equivalent period last year. The company - which began trading in 2004 - has bucked the trend of falling sales by announcing their highest ever sales figures for November.
UKSoccershop are a leading online supplier of official football shirts - stocking over 3500 products from around the world. Whether it's the latest Manchester United, Liverpool or Arsenal kit, or something a little different for the kids Christmas, if you can't find it at UKSoccershop (http://www.uksoccershop.com) it's unlikely to be available anywhere else.
"The diversity of our product range has certainly helped us in these difficult times," said owner Simon Pretswell. "We don't rely on a single product or team for the majority of our sales, in fact some of our best sellers would be nowhere near the teams you would expect to be our best selling items."
While many retailers have resorted to huge clearout sales, there has been no panic selling and instead, UKSoccershop have carefully planned their sales promotions.
"We had a really long and hard think about what our customers are looking for and have tried to tie our sales promotions to fit in with this", said Simon. "We have mixed our offers, including free shipping weekends, discount codes, special offers and BOGOF deals."
"One thing that we have placed particular emphasis on is having a good selection of lower cost items, which can act as stocking fillers. This has included discounting a number of socks, shorts and t-shirts, helping our customers get value for money on secondary Christmas presents to supplement the football shirt they choose as their main gift."
"Another major bonus for us has been our large international customer base. Around 50% of our orders at the moment are from outside the UK as our foreign buyers take advantage of the favourable exchange rates. These are all major factors which have been taken into account while planning our sales promotions."
Despite their record breaking sales return, the company is not resting on their laurels just yet.
"We have much more planned for December," said Simon. "Our customers have responded brilliantly to what we've done so far and we want to thank them from that. We are running a 'Deal a Day' promotion - each day in December we are going to have a new, unique offer for our customers."
"We have some great offers lined up. The feedback from our customers to what we've done so far has been positive - but you ain't seen nothing yet!"
