New opportunities are offering UK retailers a positive outlook for 2016, with retail IT support specialist Barron McCann revealing record numbers of store openings planned this year.
Figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and Springboard showed footfall rose by 1.2 per cent in January 2016, compared to the same period a year ago – the best performance since January 2014.
With more customers hitting the high street, retailers are encouraged to prepare for growth. Some of the UK’s larger retailers may well have pre-empted this growth as recent news revealed that Aldi had committed to opening 80 new stores this year and Barron McCann has revealed it currently has over 200 hundred store opening projects in the diary for 2016, many of which are for major retail brands.
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.”