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"Sixty per cent off!" is the bright, red and excitedly punctuated first sight that greets Christmas shoppers upon arriving at Birmingham, as they leave the New Street train station and enter the popular Pallasades shopping centre.
Similar enticements fill the windows of the menswear shop Officers Club, while inside the relatively small store are six signs repeating the 60% discount promise. "We do normally have sales around Christmas time, but not normally so early in the season. I don't know why it's changed this year, we're just doing what we're told," shrugged the store's manager, Dan Mullen.
Yet the change in strategy seemed to have little effect: although customers were flicking through the various rails of clothes at lunchtime on Thursday, there was a marked lack of a queue at the till. A lot of looking, not a lot of buying.
This was pretty much the pattern in the Pallasades, despite the plethora of ******* signs throughout the centre promising low prices, precariously treading a careful line between cheerfully festive and hysterically desperate. A green elf walked a little forlornly past an Argos Extra store which boasted a pleading sign of Christmas Gifts For Less in its window.
"I've come up from Worcester for the day to take advantage of the sales, but it's nowhere near as busy as I expected. There are a lot of people around but not many queues. I'm much warier about spending money myself," said Lynn Ferriday, a 45-year-old foster carer, shoving the bags from Next up her arm.
"I've bought a wrestling game for my young son which had been marked down £10. I've definitely seen a lot of people in front of stores trying to get you in, but not that many people shopping in the stores themselves," said Rob Clarke, from Birmingham, coming out of Argos and dodging the young women in front of Claire's Accessories who keenly tried to offer passing shoppers baskets with which to take advantage of their "three for two" offer.
Woolworths' window display consisted simply of a plastic illuminated Christmas tree topped with a bright red sign proclaiming "price drop" instead of the more traditional star. And like the three wise kings who once followed their illuminated sign, the people of Birmingham duly pursued the holy prize.
In fact, at Thursday lunchtime the only shop in the whole mall that could boast spending customers and snaking queues was Woolworths, which at first seemed surprising considering the store's doom-laden announcements this week. But it turns out that newspaper articles about impending closures are the best adverts a store can have.
"We wanted to come before it shut, plus they do have good deals here. But you don't normally have sales this early, do you?" asked Carol Foster, from Birmingham, hovering near the £15 duvets. "It sounds a bit mean but I thought, well, if they're about to shut down they're probably giving the stuff away, so I may as well take advantage," added Rory Pollock, also from Birmingham.
His hopes for low prices were fulfilled. Just past the famous Woolworths pic'n'mix, Barbies in pink boxes grinned, despite having been ignominiously marked down by half from £19.99. Coats for toddlers have been similarly reduced from £22 to £11 and customers can eat their Christmas lunch with sets of cutlery costing a mere £12.
Was Woolworths surprised by its sudden popularity? "We're always popular at this time and we always have good prices and no, I can't comment any further," said the branch manager, surveying the pandemonium anxiously.
Down the road in the more upmarket Bullring shopping centre, tumbleweed blew down the corridors. Molton Brown, Kurt Geiger and French Connection were all empty. The few stores that aren't having sales were almost empty, even such usual heavyweights as Topshop and H&M. Floating cardboard bubbles promising 20% off dangled from the ceiling in s****y Selfridges, like snowflakes frozen mid-flight. The credit crunch knows no distinction between the posh and plebs. "This is not a sale - it's a promotion," insisted Selfridges' marketing manager Andy Price, standing next to a rail of Dolce & Gabbana shirts marked down from £120 to £80. "It's just a coincidence that the ..." - he made a brief, tactful pause - "high street stores are having their sales."
Selfridges' few shoppers, however, were insensible to the distinction between sale and promotion. "I'm looking for a suit and just saw that there seemed to be a sale here. But all those newspaper articles about the credit crunch - well, they don't cancel out the store sales but they do make you warier," said Simon Morris, from Coventry.
Over in Debenhams, perfume gift boxes of Givenchy's Absolutely Irresistable were resisted by customers despite the 10% discount.
Back outside, various megaphones competed from different stores, shouting at customers that they can offer 20%, 60% or 80% off. Only when the indefatigable MCs paused for breath could you hear Slade's Merry Christmas Everybody, emanating optimistically if faintly beneath the thrum.
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