The only queue forming on Dublin’s Henry Street as St Stephen’s Day dawned was outside a shop that had no plans at all to open.
Mandy O’Reilly did not know that, however and was close to the top of the line of 20 waiting for Next to start its winter sale having made the trek from Dublin 8 to buy clothes for her four-month-old.
“I’ll talk to you now but it’s nearly nine and if the doors open I’m gone,” she said.
“This is my first time coming in for the start of the sales but clothes have got so expensive on a normal day that I thought I get some on a discount,” she continued, anxiously eyeing the doors of the shop still shrouded in darkness.
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“I’ll go in here and hit maybe a few sports shops and after that we’ll see what happens.”
What happened was absolutely nothing.
Nine o’clock came and went but the Next store didn’t open and slowly the line faded away as people realised that, while the retailer had begun its sale online, the Henry Street outlet had not been due to open on Thursday.
Many headed to Arnotts which did open although the absence of any queue in the minutes before 10am might have suggested an ordinary day.
[ Winter sales: Do they still offer value in the era of year-round discounts?Opens in new window ]
It was much the same queue-less story on Grafton Street where staff in the shoe shop Office outnumbered shoppers by a four-to-one ratio a full 30 minutes after they opened their doors at 9am.
The queue outside Brown Thomas, meanwhile, had swollen to four bargain hunters who scanned their surroundings in confusion as Wham’s Last Christmas echoed up and down the deep ravine of the empty street.
Geraldine Crooke from Arklow was top of the line. “I left home before seven,” she said. “I normally come up with my son, it’s a real tradition but this year he’s travelling from Kilkenny so I’ll meet him here. I’ll get him the Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci and Balenciaga in the sizes he needs and hang on to them until he arrives,” she explained.
For her own part, she had her eye on a Christian Dior bag costing €3,500. “It’s a lot I know but at full price it costs €4,800 so the saving is huge,” she said. “I save all year round for this. I just love the sales.”
Her daughter Corie arrived carrying coffee and brandishing a spanking new, sparkling diamond on her ring finger.
“I like the sales but really she’s the shopper,” she said gesturing to her mother. In any event, Corie will be too busying planning and saving for her wedding to shop in the sales having got engaged on Christmas Eve.
“I was taken completely by surprise,” she told The Irish Times. “We were posing for a pic and I was giving him dirty looks because he kept backing away but then suddenly he got down on bended knee and he asked me to marry him and it wasn’t a photograph at all. My mother was shooting a video.”
Her mother smiled indulgently while retaining a laser sharp focus on the doors. “The sales are so different now,” she remarked. “There used to be queues round the block with people in deck chairs and everything.”
Behind them in the queue were three generations of the same family, Nuala O’Grady, her daughter Heidi and her granddaughter Maya.
“I’m here every year,” Nuala said. “I’m looking for some Chanel pieces. Yesterday my husband said to me: ‘Don’t buy anything. whatever you do. Don’t buy anything.’ But I haven’t listened to him in the 50 years of marriage so I’m not going to start now.”
Heidi looked on with a face best described as sceptical. “I’m not much of a shopper myself, I’m just the driver today,” she explained. “I’ll be the one standing at her shoulder saying ‘Don’t buy that’ ”.
As the hands on the clock came closer to 10am more people joined the queue, although not many.
The Leonard brothers Jack and Aaran from Donabate were in the market for “everything”.
“I had a look online but what I want, the T-shirts and tops and stuff are only available in-store,” said Jack.
In the store just before the doors opened stood BTs general manager Damien Deasy ready to hose his 13th winter sales season across BTs and Arnotts.
“It has changed obviously with online shopping and the first morning can be quiet but we’ll get a surge from midday until about four. That’s the real sweet spot for shopping. We’re lucky today it’s not raining and it’s unusually warm so it’s the perfect day for shopping.”
As the doors opened he scanned the queue that had swollen to about 50.
“We used to have ropes up and down the street and had people hurtling them like it was the first day in Fairyhouse when we opened. It’s not like that now though.”
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