“I’m going to put this all over my socials,” fumed a shopper surrounded by beds on the top floor of Arnotts shortly after the Dublin department store launched its winter sale at 10am on St Stephen’s Day.
The “this” in question was the absence of the heavily discounted mattress that Alexander Cristea was there to buy.
He had been lured into the shop early on the first day after Christmas by a text message. It was sent by Arnotts overnight and promised that one brand of television was being marked down from €899 to €299, while a mattress that normally sells for €1,499 would be on offer for just €100.
But he was not a happy shopper after being told by staff they had no such mattresses on the shop floor and did not know anything about such a “massive” discount.
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He hadn’t had any joy in the television department either, as staff seemed similarly mystified by the promised deal, which was confirmed as a genuine promotion by Arnotts by The Irish Times.
“We came in for a TV,” he said, as he displayed the text message he had received “Apparently they only had one in the entire company and not one staff member has an idea about [the mattresses].”
“I’m disappointed,” he said with a degree of understatement.
He was not alone.
At the very top of the queue before the shop opened minutes earlier stood Sinead Caulwell and Ashley Walden, who are looking forward to moving into their new home in Kildare later this week.
That move had prompted them to make their first ever trip into Dublin for the opening of the winter sales and, like Cristea, they had come in search of both a television and a mattress. “It is our first and only time doing this,” Caulwell said.
“We were here at 7.15am. I thought there was going to be a big queue but when we arrived there was nobody here and we felt like eejits then,” she said.
The next person to arrive came a full 45 minutes later.
“People have been arriving slowly and surely since then,” Walden said.
He explained that they had used their time alone in the Henry Street darkness to plot a course for the sales. She was going to head directly to the furniture department, while he going down to electronics.
Just a few bodies down from them, in a queue that had swollen to maybe 100 people shortly before the shop opened, were Martin McGlynn and Grainne O’Kane.
They were also making their winter sales debuts and also in the market for the heavily discounted mattresses after being sent details of the sale by a friend.
“I don’t know how this is going to work,” he said. “We’re doing this for the craic and have never done it before.”
Like the couple in advance of him in the queue, McGlynn was also getting ready for a house move. “We will spend a good few hours shopping,” he said.
There were a lot of cross people in the electronics section shortly after the shop opened, all of them crowded around stressed-looking staff members trying to navigate a tricky situation.
But although the dispute over the price of the mattresses and tellies on the top and bottom floors of Arnotts could have turned into a mini-crisis for the retailer, it instead became an opportunity for it to prove its worth.
Within minutes, the televisions advertised with the substantial discount were being sold at the promised price – at least until stocks ran out – while the mattresses that were unavailable on the shop floor could be ordered online for €100, with staff processing sales for several suddenly happy-again customers.
After that it was business as usual. And that business was brisk, with the shop and the handful of shops nearby that opened on the morning after Christmas getting busier as the morning progressed.
There was no such sales drama across the river in the scented retail halls of Brown Thomas, where Dublin’s dedicated followers of fashion and its diehard bargain hunters were given relief on the double as St Stephen’s Day dawned.
Brown Thomas had opted to delay its opening until 10am, affording the bargain hunters a lie-in.
The weather gods, meanwhile, were also smiling with crisp morning air and bright blue skies replacing the damp and blustery conditions that settled over the city for much of Christmas Day.
In the end, BTs actually jumped the gun and opened 25 minutes before the appointed hour.
“We did open a bit early,” said the Brown Thomas Stores Director Mark Limby as he took a break from arranging displays in the men’s department. He suggested that the decision had given the early birds a more pleasant experience and – of course – more time to shop.
“We’ve had a really good response so far,” he said.
“As you can see, we’re quite busy already. We have some great bargains on accessories and handbags as well but so far this morning, it’s all been about menswear. It’s more than I’ve seen before. Obviously, a lot of men woke up this morning with a lot of gift cards.”
He noted that while many retailers are in sale for long periods before Christmas, the winter sales retain a degree of magic. “We had quite a big crowd this morning so we’re really pleased.”
It is a world of difference to some recent years that saw sales periods disrupted and cancelled by Covid. “We were very appreciative of customers who were very patient during that time but, I think like all of us, we’re glad we’re back to normal.”
It was not so normal weeks earlier when rioters had ransacked the north inner-city, looting BT’s sister shop Arnotts.
Business had been damaged in the days after the violent scenes, said McDonald.
“But I think what we’re seeing is a lot of people want to come back and they want to enjoy their city. They don’t want that to be a detrimental effect. We have had some great experiences in the city and a lot of effort has gone in to bringing people into the city.”
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