More than 600,000 shoppers are expected to boost January sales at Broadway Shopping Centre in Bexleyheath after a successful December which saw more than a million visits through the centre’s doors.

Retailers at Bexleyheath’s busy Broadway Shopping Centre are braced for a busy January, with almost 100 extra staff taken on by stores to cope with increased demand over Christmas and the New Year.

Already more than a million shoppers have visited in December, with Click and Collect services driving footfall at many stores.

Broadway Shopping Centre’s General Manager Peter Sedge said: “This is a key time for retailers and we’re expecting a busy New Year’s sales period.

“With over a million visitors during December, we’re anticipating around 600,000 visitors in January, so all our staff will be working hard to make sure our customers have the best possible experience.

“Click and Collect is driving a lot of footfall into the centre, and then people are spending time browsing, and picking up bargains while they are here.

“We’re open from 9am until 5pm on Friday, and 10am until 4pm on Sunday, and as usual from 9am until 6pm on Saturday.

“We’ve got a great range of food options too so people can grab a snack if they want to spend the whole day shopping.”

Argos took on 37 extra staff to meet demand at their Bexleyheath store in Broadway Shopping Centre this festive season.

Stock manager Vanessa Parr said: “We’ve been absolutely inundated. Click and Collect has taken off and we are getting a lot of people coming in off the back of that.

“Gadgets have proved particularly popular this year, things like the Amazon tablets, Kindles, Amazon fire sticks and Now TV boxes.

“We will have lots of great deals in January so we expect lots of shoppers to take advantage of those.”

Samantha Thorowgood, manager at Ernst Jones jewellers in Broadway Shopping Centre, Bexleyheath said: “The Santa’s Grotto at Broadway has been fantastic this year. The queue has been really long and it’s attracted a lot of people into the centre.”

“We’ve had some fantastic offers on diamonds right up to Christmas Eve and that’s brought a lot of people in too.”

She added: “Our January sales kick off on Tuesday December 27th so we hope to see a lot of local people coming in to take advantage of our deals and that will be good for business.”

Caron Linyard, manager at The Entertainer, said: “Sales have been steady across the Christmas shopping season, we’ve had a huge increase in Click and Collect shoppers this year.

“Our Penny sale has been really popular, and we always have a Boxing Day promotion after Christmas, so people should look out for that going into the New Year.”

River Island store Manager in Bexleyheath Vicki Harvey said: “We took on extra staff to help us meet demand during Christmas and New Year and it got busier throughout December as we got closer to Christmas.

“Click and collect has been a big driver of sales for the company this year. We’ll have lots of sales on starting from Boxing Day to we’re expecting that to drive footfall into January.”

Ash Bechra manager at GAME in Broadway Shopping Centre, said: “We doubled our team and took on 15 extra staff to cope with demand over Christmas and New Year.

“Click and Collect has helped draw a lot of people into the store. Our big selling games for 2016 have been Call of Duty, Fifa and Battlefield. We’ll have more offers in store for New Year, so we’re anticipating a busy January too.”

For more information about stores at Broadway Shopping Centre go to www.broadwayshoppingcentre.com or visit the centre’s Facebook page or Twitter account @BroadwayBexley Based on information supplied by Deb James.