When gloom and despondency stalk the aisles of the palaces of retail, and a customer with a well-stocked wallet and a twinkle in his eye is rarer than a rainbow unicorn, the sector gets properly Darwinian.

You don’t need to have spent a lifetime studying the tortoises of the Galapagos to predict what will happen next, with the lean and hungry continuing to prosper while anybody with a bit of flab amidships hoists the white flag and waddles off to try something a little less challenging...

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