Emmet Oliver

I suppose what's difficult to know is, is it just they're staying away from Black Friday and spending it at other times of the Christmas shopping season?

So it's difficult for you guys to track the exact trends.

Yeah, I suppose neither of us want to be too doom and gloomy about this because some people who aren't and who don't know about any of this will be saying to themselves, oh, I'm a gig economy worker or I'm a temporary worker.

Okay, so if anything, yeah, it could actually amplify the thing more that they're not going to be seen as much once this is over, right?

Oh, I've got a pension for the first time.

The other one is to balance out online versus the bricks and mortar store.

So there is people who see this as a pretty decent change to their conditions.

And you're noticing very interesting trends there too.

They like to pick up the goods, look at them.

Now, as we know, there's not just the British, European, Irish stores involved here.

We've seen massive Chinese companies, Shine, Timu, all these big retailers are coming in.

Yeah, I suppose the employers who are going to feel the chill the most are the ones that rely on a lot of temporary or sort of gig economy workers that they're going to have to convert over into auto enrolment, whereas the more established, larger companies that already have big occupational pension schemes in place will probably say, well, we're kind of already covered there.

Some people are trying to get Amazon, of course.

But how much stock is in the stores?

Because shortages can be really acute at this time of the year, even with all those names I've mentioned.

But if you're a smaller company and you have a lot of casual staff, this is going to be huge for you.

Because Ruth, a lot of people are still quite critical of this whole Black Friday, Cyber Monday thing.

And they see it as the retailers have created a retail event that doesn't really exist.

So are you getting a sense of the survey results that there are actual bargains out there?

Or is this more about marketing driven than anything else?