“Jaysus, but downstairs is jammers,” a young man in a padded jacket said as he and his pals ambled through the Liffey St entrance to Arnotts shortly after the winter sales kicked off at 10am on St Stephen’s Day.
He was looking down the spiral staircase leading towards the department store’s sports section with some dismay until a realisation dawned.
“Ah no, they’re only the mannequins,” he exclaimed, the relief in his voice hard to miss. Then his group veered off and set off in the direction of the Hugo Boss concession in search of “the deals”, as they put it.
Whatever about deals, “jammers” was not a word that could have been used, even with the most poetic of licences, to describe Dublin city as it woke up from a 40-hour retail rest on the morning after the big day.
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At 8am, the time when, in times past, the retail sales kicked off in a bit of a frenzy, only a handful of people wandered Henry St and a queue – if that isn’t overstating it – had formed outside just the one shop: Zara.
There were five people in that queue and while none were keen to speak to The Irish Times, their expressions suggested they were all wondering exactly why they’d hauled themselves from St Stephen’s slumber before dawn’s early light to stand in the cold outside a shop that wasn’t planning to open for another hour.
By 8.30am, there were more people out in and about in the city centre but still no sign of a queue outside Arnotts with the only person in the door way a rough sleeper gathering himself in early anticipation of the doors opening and the rush starting.
Across the Liffey minutes later, just three people were standing at the doors of Brown Thomas on Grafton St and none looked particularly delighted by their life choices at that moment.
“I’m disappointed with the crowd to be honest,” admitted Aine Lenihan from Glasnevin. “I thought there’d be more people here. Mind you I’ve never been first in the queue so that’s something. I was third a couple of years ago but this is the first time I’ve been at the top.”
She was in town with a singular aim. “I’m going to the Chanel counter that’s all,” she said. “I don’t have my eye on anything in particular but I will go there and then home. I’ll be on my way half an hour after the doors open.”
So what prompted her to come in so early?
“I’ve learned from my mistakes,” she told The Irish Times. “Last year I left it until the midmorning and I remember seeing this person holding some earrings from Chanel that I would’ve bought, I followed her around the shop, I stalked her, thinking ‘please put them down, please put them down’. But she didn’t.. That’s not going to happen to me this year.”
Back on the northside, outside Arnotts something close to a queue was forming and Adam Keogh from Tallaght was close to the front and far more chatty.
“I’m looking for anything with 50 per cent off,” he said.
Anything?
“Well, maybe something from Hugo Boss or Tommy Hilfiger,” he clarified. “The girls here,” he continued, gesturing at his teenage daughters Ashlee and Aimee, “will be looking for make-up. It’s mad how much the world has changed in just a couple of years. I don’t think we had a single toy in the house this Christmas, nothing at all from Smyths. The girls got cash for Christmas instead of vouchers.”
Orna Fallon and her daughter Clodagh from Santry were just ahead of the Keoghs in the short queue and were all over the plates.
“We’re here for the Denby,” Orna explained. “I don’t know how big the discounts are but it’ll be something. We come in every year to get the Denby We might look at the bed linen too.”
Why would the mother and daughter need to make an annual pilgrimage to buy plates?
“They keep breaking,” she said. “Or at least the dinner plates do. I don’t know how they get smashed, you’d have to talk to my husband about that. He tells me he doesn’t break them but it isn’t me or her,” she concluded with resolute finality.
By 9.50am, 10 minutes before the Brown Thomas doors were scheduled to open, the queue had fallen into disrepair and “huddled mass” would have been a more accurate description of the 70 odd people gathered on Grafton St.
Then, a minute later, the doors opened unexpectedly and the huddle streamed in searching for bargains,
“It was getting cold out there so I decided to open a bit early,” the high-end department store’s general manager Damian Deasy said. “It’s great to see a bit of a buzz about the place, especially after the last two years with Covid and all that. It’s nice people are out and about again.”
While things were pretty busy in Dublin’s leading department stores as the day progressed, with footfall up by as much as 25 per cent on last. year and reaching levels not seen since pre-Covid times, things were even brighter further south.
“Cork is definitely leading the race across all the Brown Thomas shops so far and it has been reporting very strong numbers,” Mr Deasy said. “Galway and Limerick are also doing very well.”
“It has been really good, really positive numbers across all our stores and you can feel the buzz with people glad to be out and about with that bit of normality and no restrictions in place.”
He said menswear had been particularly busy. “You could see that when the shop opened and the majority of people waiting were men.”
Anthony Ryan of Ryans of Galway was happy enough with the first day of the sales. “We opened at 11am and we had a small queue like we always do but it was fairly quiet for the first hour and then from midday it really picked up,” he said.
He noted that young men in particular were out in force. “That is where we are getting the money and bed linen is busy too. There are a fair few people around the city today but only about half the shops are open. I’d say we will be busier again as the week goes on.”
