Retail and leisure complex Liverpool ONE is predicting its ‘busiest ever’ Christmas with sales during the festive period expected to hit an ‘all-time high’. Tony McDonough reports
Liverpool ONE is expecting its best-ever Christmas in terms of footfall and sales since it opened in 2008.
Already this year, sales are up by almost 6%, compared to a national average of just 3% based on data from the British Retail Consortium. Liverpool ONE operator Grosvenor expects this trend to continue up to Christmas.
So far this year the company says beauty sales are up 21% and menswear sales up 30%. It adds that pop-up brands at the retail and leisure complex are proving popular with the public.
Leisure and entertainment – such as crazy golf, escape rooms and gaming venues – have come out on top at Liverpool ONE, with this sector seeing a 56% rise in turnover this year. This was helped by Liverpool ONE’s latest addition Gravity MAX.
A total of 28 new brands have opened up or expanded at Liverpool ONE throughout 2023, including athleisure favourites Sweaty Betty and Under Armour, along with retail giant Marks and Spencer, plus Swarovski and Space NK.
Pop-up stores have been more popular than ever before, with North West-based fashion labels Noughts & Kisses and Caramella taking up space, while global giant Tesla also launched a long term pop-up at Liverpool ONE this year.
In September Liverpool ONE published a report it had commissioned, carried out by Deloitte, which estimated the complex had generated £4.1bn in economic activity during its first 15 years.
Also in September, Mark Preston, chief executive of Grosvenor, told LBN the company took a huge financial hit on Liverpool ONE in 2008 due to the global financial crisis.
Donna Howitt, place strategy director at Liverpool ONE, said: “We have had an incredibly successful year which has put us in good stead as we enter the festive period.
“We’ve welcomed more pop-up stores than we have ever done, meaning visitors have had exciting, fresh brands to enjoy on a regular basis.
“These pop-ups have been a mixture of online clothing companies which have chosen Liverpool ONE to showcase their offering in person, plus globally recognised names, giving shoppers a real variety of choice.
“As a nation, it has of course been a challenging year as the cost-of-living crisis forced us all to tighten purse strings.
“However, it’s encouraging to see that here at Liverpool ONE, and across the region, we are bucking the trends and outperforming other city centres across the UK.