Retailer confidence soars in 2016

Recent figures and store openings reveal that new opportunities are helping retailers across and outside the UK to bounce back, as retail IT support specialist Barron McCann reveals record numbers of store openings planned for 2016.

Figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and Springboard showed footfall rose by 1.2% in January 2016, compared to the same period a year ago – the best performance since January 2014. There were also improvements for high street shopping locations, which have not seen any increases – excluding Easter – since July 2013 – as January saw footfall rise by 0.2%*. With more customers hitting the high street, retailers are encouraged to prepare for growth.

Retailers may well have pre-empted this growth as recent news revealed that Aldi had committed to opening 80 new stores this year. It also seems many are following suit as retail IT Service specialists Barron McCann have revealed that they currently have over 200 hundred store opening projects in the diary for this year, many of which are for major retail brands.

Most recently, Barron McCann was involved in assisting PEP&CO with its impressive 50-store UK rollout, completed in just 50 days! The team also flew out to Spain to help with the set up of a new 5-story department store for a major international fashion brand. The company is well known for providing a wide range of Project, Infrastructure & Deployment (PID) services, including hardware procurement, installation, project management, P2PE PED rollouts and technical support.

Sean Chandiram, Sales and Marketing Director at Barron McCann, said: “We are still seeing constant evolution within the high-street, and retailers are becoming more optimistic about the future with the new opportunities that are available to them – whilst some doors are closing for retailers, other doors are definitely opening. The number of store openings Barron McCann has recently been, and is planning to be involved with, just shows the scale of what is still available to retailers in 2016.”