THE Christmas sales used to be a bit like the Dublin City Marathon. To compete at all, you needed fitness and stamina, but most participants were mere fun runners who left the real competition to a small elite.
These crack consumer athletes went into training in November, queued outside department stores all night and, as soon as the doors opened, sprinted for the prize of a £3,000 fur coat reduced to £50.
But those days are gone, thanks to foreign students. "The intention used to be for a few customers to get great value," says Mr Tom Rea, general manager/ director of Clerys. "But overseas students with nothing to do at Christmas started queuing for the big bargains. Then they'd try to resell them, sometimes in the shop."
So the sales 1996-style are one big post-Christmas fun run, with no Dick Hoopers and no mad scrambles at the start. Business in Clerys was brisk yesterday to be sure, but largely unfrenzied. The sole exception was the jumper department, where customers were behaving like Americans on the last day of their Irish vacation.
It was brisk too in Marks and Spencers in Grafton Street, but by mid-morning the rows of jumpers and shirts were still as tidy as a Daniel O'Donnell hair- style. The real action, it seemed, was across the street in Brown Thomas, where cut-price designer clothes were being snapped up by more tall, thin women than one ever suspected Ireland of possessing.
Members of the St John's Ambulance were on duty in the store, to cater for emergencies. In a shop like BT, you always run the risk of ugly scenes when you're down to the last Gucci handbag.
But perhaps the real reason for the ambulance staffs presence was the danger of casual shoppers walking in off the street and fainting at the prices.
Among the bargains on offer yesterday were "Jean Paul Gaultier military suits" reduced to £595, Vivienne Westwood evening jackets at a mere £525, and Gucci short waistcoats (God only knows what the long ones cost) slashed from £980 to £490.
Still, BT was claiming a 10 per cent increase in sales on last year. Louis Copeland, obviously benefiting from the up-market splurge, claimed a 30 per cent rise. The Dublin Chamber of Commerce predicted strong sales generally would leave annual growth at about 6 per cent, and stressed the big increase in UK investment during 1996.
The point was illustrated by a young English executive in Marks and Spencers who, pressed for a measure of yesterday's business, regretted he could not put a figure on it "in sterling". It's so hard to get the hang of these foreign currencies.
