WOMEN led the rush for bargains in the post-Christmas sales on the high street yesterday, while men stayed at home to indulge in the latest craze of armchair shopping on the net.

About £1.4 billion is predicted to be spent in this traditional sale period. The hunt for online sales began in the early hours of Christmas Day as soon as Marks & Spencer, Dixons and Argos cut prices on their web stores. Comet predicted as many as 100,000 internet sales in a day as shoppers bought electrical goods. Other companies eager to capture this market were Dixons, Currys, PC World, The Link, Virgin Megastore and HMV.

Many men have moved fast to snap up the best bargains on the internet before today’s official start of sales when many chains, including Marks & Spencer and Next, begin to clear stock after a sluggish December. Retail chiefs are expecting today to be the biggest day in sales for weeks with more than ten million people — one in six of the population — predicted to join the frenzy, spending on average £130 each.

The day after Boxing Day is also the traditional day for families to scour the stores for best bargains and this year an influx of children and teenagers is expected to spend Christmas gift vouchers after sales of tokens rose by a third.

Women outnumbered men 70 per cent to 30 per cent in most shopping centres and department stores such as Selfridges, Debenhams and House of Fraser, according to industry sources.

Queues in Oxford Street, London, started from 5am. Prices were slashed by 50 per cent for many items, and some prices were down 75 per cent.

The first three sales in the flagship Selfridges store in Oxford Street by 9.05am were a Burberry Prorsum handbag, which was reduced from £595 to £297; a Gucci large GG chain bag, reduced from £400 to £280; and a Celine trunkette bag, which was half price at £350. Women also homed in on David Morris jewellery where eyecatching dress rings were on offer for £900, reduced from more than £4,100.

Selfridges said: “It’s as if women have delayed getting their Christmas gift to get must-have designer luxury. Trading really has shifted to the luxury end of the market and accessories.”

About 150,000 sales were made by end of trading in the store yesterday. The same trend was noticed in the Bullring, in Birmingham, where there was an extra 6 per cent of shoppers, again mostly women. They also plumped for designer luxuries such as a Prada bag, reduced from £800 to £479; a Mulberry gunmetal Ledbury bag reduced from £350 to £249; and a Vivienne Westwood satin wraparound dress, reduced from £355 to £177.

At the Metro Centre, in Gateshead, the number of shoppers was up from 60,000 on Boxing Day last year to 70,000. At the Lakeside shopping centre in Thurrock, Essex, and Bluewater, in Greenhithe, Kent, thousands of bargain hunters arrived from as early as 5am to get the best deals.

Mathew Clements, executive general manager at Bluewater, said that there were 75,000 shoppers yesterday and suggested that the figure could double today. About one million shoppers are expected across the next six days. Mr Clements accepted that internet sales were now a “feature of the retail landscape”, but he was confident this would not dent sales.

The Trafford Centre, in Manchester, where John Lewis was the first store in the UK to open on Boxing Day, was also very busy.

Possibly the most determined bargain hunter yesterday was John Allan, 60, from Billingham, Teesside, who after eating Christmas lunch donned his thermals to head a queue outside the furniture retailer Barker and Stonehouse in Middlesbrough.

His prize was a leather sofa and chair set reduced from £2,520 to £399.

£5BN BUSINESS

• Many companies rely on Christmas and January sales for up to 60 per cent of turnover. In jewellery, it reaches 90 per cent
  
  
• This Christmas some 25 million customers will have spent £5 billion online — e-Bay and Amazon head the list of e-retailers with Tesco and Argos jostling for the top
  
  
• Online shopping is growing 130 times faster than high street sales, according to Interactive Media in Retail Group
  
  
• This is mainly driven by sales of CDs, DVDs, books and ticket purchases
  
  
• In the UK there are 26,000 online shops selling five million products. Online is forecast to make up one fifth of total retail by 2010
  
  
• The first recorded secure online purchase was that of Sting's Ten Summoner's Tales in August 1994 for $12.48, plus shipping costs, on the US site NetMarket

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