The customer is always right…

Another week, another tale of fashion sector woe. More retailers took a battering in the headlines this week.

They ranged from fashion giant Mosaic Fashions, which revealed it has suffered a £30.2 million pre-tax loss in the year to January, to smaller players such as Jacques Vert, which issued a profit warning and said it would fall short of market expectations by up to £1 million.

The word “gloom” springs to mind yet again. But the gloom looks decidedly murkier when you consider that no one really knows the extent of the troubles that the sector is facing. This is largely because there are so few quoted fashion specialists and they tend not to be the worst performers. Only a handful – including Next and Marks & Spencer – are obliged to reveal the full extent of their trading and release information into the public domain. The bare bones of the figures released by the remainder leave the analysts with significantly less to scrutinize. Those which may appear to be strong performers on the surface may well be paddling like mad underwater to keep afloat.

However, enough of the pessimism, there are practical things that fashion retailers can do to help themselves. The only way to keep ahead of the pack is to help your store staff persuade customers to part with their cash. Focusing on customer service has never been more important and there are anecdotal signs that some of those in the sector are doing just that.

How true it is that shoppers only relate the bad experiences of staff on the high street, but a Sunday trawl of Oxford Street and Regent Street highlighted that it’s not only the oft-cited John Lewis partners that are showing how customer service should be done. Staff from Browns Focus to Reiss to Miss Selfridge couldn’t do enough to help. In fact, the efforts at the latter were verging on superhuman. I defy most people to remain resolutely cheerful at 5pm on a Sunday when they have spent most of the day having unwanted clothes practically thrown at them at fitting room exits, but they managed it.

So there we have it. Praise and a round of applause, please, for the usually low-paid and often harassed store staff who are helping to keep the tills ringing when those in head office are no doubt feeling decidedly edgy about the months ahead.

To be honest, though, even this feeling of goodwill will probably be short-lived. Come to think of it, there was one exception on Sunday – All Saints on South Molton Street, where stony-faced staff looked me up and down as if I’d crawled out from under a rock. See, no matter how hard you try, shoppers just can’t resist a whine… so much for banishing pessimism.