‘Double Whammy’ Of Challenging Sales Growth And Margin Pressure Hits Results, Says KPMG

Helen Dickinson, KPMG’s head of retail comments on today’s interim results by
retailers Tesco and Sainsbury:

“These results are really not surprising. With consumers’ incomes being squeezed from many quarters, sales volumes are declining. Shop food prices are now hovering at 5 percent higher than a year ago, reflecting the impact of commodity price pressures. For retailers this generates the ‘double whammy’ of challenging sales growth as well as margin pressure.”

“Food retailers, along with the rest of the sector, are doing all they can to respond.

“Consumers increased desire to purchase promotional products looks set to continue and they are also seeking to reduce the inflationary impact of their weekly shop by changing the mix of products purchased.”

Kids drive home safety message

SCHOOLS across Beverley are being given the chance to promote road safety.

 

Following on from the success of last year’s Road Safety Week competition, Recognition Express Hull and East Riding, specialists in promotional gifts, personalised clothing and school uniform, has once again joined forces with Brake, the national road safety charity.

The two are running a ‘Design a Road Safety Banner’ competition, which last year was won by Amy Clappison from Beverley St Mary’s school.

Amy saw her banner design turned into the real thing hung outside the school to encourage traffic to slow down.

This year’s Road Safety Week takes place between November 21 and 27 and Recognition Express is inviting local school children aged between 4 and 11 to design a banner to display outside their school to raise awareness about road safety and encourage traffic to slow down to 20mph. The children can use Brake’s ‘Kids Say Slow Down’ or ‘20’s Plenty’ slogans for their designs.

The winning school will receive a banner printed with their winning design plus 300 high-visibility drawstring bags. The student who creates the winning design will receive a special Star Award for their achievement.

Every school that takes part this year will also automatically receive 200 ‘Star Writer’ pencils plus affiliate membership to Brake. Jan Chidley, of Recognition Express said: “Every 30 seconds someone, somewhere in the world, is killed in a road crash. Brake does a fantastic job of campaigning about road safety and supporting victims. Running this competition gives us the opportunity to raise awareness amongst children and hopefully help to keep them safe. We had so many entries last year and the creativity shown by the children was superb. We hope even more schools will take part this year.”

 

Article source – http://www.beverleyguardian.co.uk/community/kids_drive_home_safety_message_1_3757978