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Snowy disruption continued in Scotland this week as the country’s road network stuttered and in some locations stopped altogether.
Retailers reacted by putting notices on their websites about slower than normal deliveries and earlier this week both Tesco and Sainsbury’s stopped taking orders on their websites from shoppers north of the border. Amazon noted on its website that “some areas of Scotland are experiencing delays of up to three days”.
Phil Carroll, head of books at Sainsbury’s, said: “We had a couple of days, especially in the south [of England] and Scotland, where sales dropped quite a lot year on year. Obviously, if people can’t get to the stores, it’s going to happen.” However, he added: “We’ve been in retail long enough and we knew that the snow was coming a week before it happened, so we pulled stock out of HarperCollins Distribution [based in Glasgow] to make sure that we’d have enough.”
In spite of the Scottish weather being billed as the worst for more than two decades, many independents were adopting a phlegmatic approach to Christmas, even those in areas that had been heavily affected. Alistair Cruikshank, owner of Grampian Bookshop in Forfar, said: “The weather’s had a big bearing on things, but it has been picking up, although it is a slightly slower pace than last year.” He said there were a number of books that were “out there” but which had yet to be delivered, but added when the situation was explained to customers, “they had understood”.
On Scotland’s west coast, Don Shaw, manager of the Ullapool Bookshop, said deliveries were “trickling through but they’re about a week late”. He continued: “We may be just about up on last year. We’re slightly down at the moment, but things may improve this week and next.”