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Christmas for retailers can be a busy time, with some traders making half of their yearly profits at Christmas time and New Year. However this year, the final trading days will make or break the festive period. After a dismal year of sales which saw more high street shops go into administration, not to mention the effects of the London riots on independent businesses, the New Year is set to bring more profit warnings and perhaps more closures reports the Financial Times.

“I think that Christmas is going to be very difficult,” says Richard Hyman, strategic retail adviser to Deloitte. “Retailers are going to find that they have not got as much cash in the tills as they would want, and in some cases need.”

Last year retailers could blame slow sales on the weather but this year has seen the opposite; warm weather meaning there is surplus stock in stores. Put this together with the Euro crisis and people are not spending. One leading retailer says this Christmas shopping season has the ring of 2008, when consumer spending stalled after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. “It’s not an entirely dissimilar environment,” he says. One of the only improvements seen on spending has been on the internet, as spending has been up. Only time will tell how this Christmas will affect the high street this year.

Words by Adriana Panas-Webb