Comment: With the Olympics over, what’s left for retailers?

Well that’s it then, today is the first post-Olympic day and already there will be people feeling the lack of screens featuring other people running, jumping or splashing.

For many, it would seem the Games’ feel-good factor boiled down to watching others exert themselves while not actually doing anything other than relaxing in front of a big or small screen.

There will be those who manage to do something of the kind for the Paralympic Games, but for retailers in particular, the main event has now come, been and gone. And the real question has to be ‘What’s next’? We’ve had the Jubilee, we’ve watched the footie and the weather held good for the Olympics, even if, initially, there were doubts about whether there would be a sales fillip as a result of all of this. The latter still remains unknown (and will remain that way until later in the autumn), but the general principle seems to have been that there has always been something else just over the horizon on which to pin hopes.

Now there is nothing, or at least nothing around which the nation can unite. Life as we know it goes on however and this week sees the opening of the new-look Wilko, Victoria’s Secret’s Bond Street flagship is supposed to be just around the corner and Burberry will, presumably, open at some point on Regent Street.

And if that’s not enough, it’s mid-August, meaning that most will now be hoping for an imminent change in the weather as the prospect of “early autumn” deliveries becomes a pressing reality. How will stores be remerchandised to add a little excitement to the dog days of the first week of September when back to school and, for many, back to work, dominate?

Retailing is built upon events, hope and a liberal dose of optimism and it turns out there will still be plenty of both over the next few months – it’s just a matter of how they are handled. And if all else fails and the weather doesn’t do that which it is supposed to, there is always the pre-Christmas stampede to look forward to. OK so we managed to get a few Olympic golds this time round – all this will be a distant memory in a few weeks time as the industry turns its sights on something else – to praise or moan about. Retail is a fickle mistress.