Harrods hopes sale will prove experts wrong

Department store Harrods was hoping to prove the experts wrong today and pull in a bumper profit on the first day of its winter sale.

Despite predictions of gloomy sales on the High Street, Harrods insisted that more people went through its doors this morning than on the first day of any other sale.

Australian pop star and actress Holly Valance, who launched the sale, told the queuing crowd: “I’m very excited to be here” before the store’s chairman, Mohamed Al Fayed, leaned over and whispered: “Tell them about the bargains”.

More than 700 shoppers waited outside the 10 doors of the store in central London before it opened at 9.05am.

Some had spent three wet nights hoping to be first to bag some of the one-off bargains.

Holly, 19, wearing a Prada dress and Cartier jewellery arrived in a horse-drawn carriage before being escorted around some of the store’s one million square feet of floor space by Mr Al Fayed.

He told the Neighbours star, who recently bought a house in nearby South Kensington: “This could be your new corner shop.”

Among the shoppers thronging the store were the Kyoshugo family, who flew from Tokyo especially for the sale.

The first day of the sale was brought forward from its usual date of the first Wednesday in January because store managers did not want to open on New Year’s Day.

“We tried opening once on New Year’s Day but we had dismal sales,” said a shop source.

“The customers didn’t want to shop and the staff were hung over and didn’t want to work.”

Despite the optimism at Harrods, city experts have predicted that the High Street boom is drawing to a close and will run out of steam amid growing fears about war and the economy.

The slowdown could have devastating effects on those companies which had failed to make the most of the buoyant demand in the past year, analysts said.

Pressure for another interest rate cut was also likely to rise as the Bank of England tries to guide the UK through the global downturn.