Next poised to bring forward summer promotion

Fashion giant Next is poised to bring forward its highly anticipated summer promotion – in an effort to manage demand at its shops. 

The Next summer sale, which normally offers price cuts of up to 70 per cent, is one of the biggest events in the high street calendar and is estimated to clear more than £100million of stock. 

Sources said it is hoped that launching on Thursday this week rather than Saturday will ease demand from shoppers who normally begin queuing at its 500 stores well before they open at 5am. 

Bargain: The Next summer sale is one of the biggest events in the high street calendar

The number of shoppers allowed in store at any one time will be limited to uphold distancing guidelines – and shoppers will be offered VIP tickets to ‘queue’ online. Most retailers have been holding sales for weeks. But Next has stuck to its strategy of only four a year, with two main events in post-Christmas and July and limited ones in March and September. 

Next also has a ‘clearance’ section on its website which is limited to older stock from previous seasons. One fashion industry source described the event as a ‘slick operation’ that involves shipping vast quantities of stock from storage warehouses overnight which ‘other retailers would find impossible’. 

However, limits to numbers in the shops plus the ban on trying on clothes could dampen the normally blockbuster turnout.