There are still 3 weeks left till Christmas but the holiday shopping frenzy is well underway. Now let’s go to London and check out how the retail business there is getting ready for the busy season.
Christmas is one of the busiest periods for digital printing company Photobox.It will dispatch around 2.5 million parcels, that’s 2-3 items per second before the big day.
Stan Laurent is the company’s CEO.
"Christmas is about a third of our business overall so we sell a very emotional product so they’re very suitable for an event like Christmas and we’ll probably grow solid double digit percentage growth at Photobox and all of the brands." said Stan.
This Christmas is set to be a record breaker in the UK. Shoppers are expected to spend 1.4 billion pounds more than last year.
Total spending will increase 3.5 percent adding more than 40 billion pounds to the economy.
Half of that will be from online sales - which is expected to increase by a fifth to 5 billion pounds.
And shoppers are getting better at finding bargains too - using the internet in new ways.
Amazon is of course a favourite with internet shoppers.
But even it’s being side-stepped by some as shoppers choose to buy direct from the supplier.
A recent change in policy means retailers who already sell their products on Amazon can sell them cheaper direct if they wish. That’s leading to a bargain-hunting frenzy says Planet Retail’s Malcolm Pinkerton.
Amazon’s fighting back.It’s testing unmanned drones to deliver parcels to customers.
The so-called Octocopers will be able to deliver packages weighing up to 2.3 kg within 30 minutes of an order being placed. The Prime Air service comes as Amazon looks to improve growth by efficiency.
But it won’t be coming anytime soon - it’s likely to be 5 years before it’s up and running.