Multiple retailers shut their doors or closed early yesterday, disrupted by Occupy Central protests during the National Day "golden week", typically one of the busiest shopping periods of the year, as citywide sales for the month of August rose 3.4 per cent over a year earlier, breaking a six-month decline. The National Day holiday, which officially begins tomorrow, typically attracts a large number of mainland tourist shoppers but tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets over the weekend, as many as 60,000 according to some estimates, campaigning for political reform. While Harvey Nichols in Pacific Place opened yesterday, the shopping mall management said it planned to close early at 6.30pm, instead of the usual closing time of 8pm. "Look, you can see there are no sales," a security guard outside the posh department store said. Protesters blocked streets in Admiralty and gathered on Causeway Bay's Hennessy Road outside department store Sogo and even in Mong Kok outside Langham Place mall. Central shops, despite not being barricaded, saw decreased traffic flow as shoppers stayed home. Around a dozen stores in the Pacific Place mall, many of them street-facing, were closed including Coach, Kate Spade, L'Occitane, Jo Malone, The Swank, Crabtree & Evelyn, and the mall's Beauty Bazaar - which has makeup boutiques such as Chanel, Nars, La Mer, Natura Bisse, and La Prairie - was not open. "The Occupy Central movement is more widespread than we previously expected and the impact of sustained protests would be negative," Daiwa Capital Markets Hong Kong analyst Jamie Soo said. "This recent turn of events is likely to result in overall negative consumer sentiment and, more directly, foot traffic disruptions at key tourist centres in Hong Kong, which could damage sales for October. It will be difficult to drive business, especially for street-level stores when the streets are blocked with people … a lot of stores have simply not even opened for business, while others have not sold a thing [yesterday]." At least two shops inside the Admiralty MTR station and two Chow Tai Fook boutiques near Sogo in Causeway Bay were also shut. A spokeswoman for Lifestyle International, the operator of department store Sogo, confirmed that the Causeway Bay location shut at 6pm, four hours earlier than normal. The events could drag October's retail sales into the negative. August figures were helped by a Mid-Autumn Festival that fell in August instead of September, bringing purchases forward. "One of the main reasons [for the rebound] is mooncakes. Everybody knows that the numbers for mooncakes in Hong Kong is astounding," said Hong Kong Retail Management Association chairwoman Caroline Mak Sui-king. While she said it was too early to judge Occupy Central's impact, she said the cancellation of National Day fireworks, which was announced yesterday, would most likely have some impact.
