«The expectations for our traders are not exciting». The statement of Confcommercio Reggio Calabria on the opening of sales in the city is a sort of manifesto. The trade association, in fact, remains critical of the early opening of the discount season and is relaunching the #comprosottocasa campaign again this year, to promote local trade.
«There is clear opposition – declared the management of Confcommercio Reggio – to an excessively early departure date and to a mechanism that evidently needs a “complete review”. For several years now, traders have been experiencing a paradoxical condition with a regulation of sales which, by providing for a single national date, is correct in principle, wanting to avoid competition between adjacent territories, but is not correct in substance, placing this date at a unsustainable for our reality.”
This year, the management of Federmoda Confcommercio Reggio Calabria had moved in time by putting forward a proposal which identified Saturday 27 January as the start of the winter sales on a national scale and a broader request for a revision of the current sales scheme also with reference to the regulation of promotional sales in the period preceding the launch.
«Unfortunately, the position we firmly supported did not produce the desired results – stated Confcommercio president Lorenzo Labate -. The early start of the sales is a circumstance that is certainly good in some territories, but sacrifices the work of many other traders in many other Italian realities, including ours. As a trader in the fashion sector, I well understand and fully share the observations and discouragement of many of my colleagues. As Confcommercio Reggio Calabria we supported the position of postponing the sales to restore logic to this type of promotion. In fact, the aim should be, on the one hand, to offer shopkeepers the opportunity to sell, at the end of the season, fashion items which, if not sold within a certain time, are susceptible to considerable depreciation. On the other hand, allow customers to purchase useful items at discounted prices to face the last part of winter, as well as to renew their wardrobe in view of the following year. The way in which balances are regulated today completely betrays their original rationale. Implemented like this they end up being harmful.”
In Calabria the winter sales will start tomorrow. The estimate is a per capita expense of 137 euros and 306 per family, an improvement compared to the previous year. Naturally, this is a national average, given the sales trend in the province of Reggio even during the Christmas period, for Confcommercio Reggio Calabria “the expectations for our traders are not exciting”.