A session made-to-fit the British apparel

"We've had (an) unseasonal warm October and beginning

of November and it's pretty tough out there," New Look´s Chief Executive Anders Kristiansen told the press on Tuesday, though he said the firm had no plans for pre-Christmas discounting and was still optimistic it could have a good third quarter.

The British fashion retailer warned that trading in the fourth quarter – which includes Christmas - had got off to a slow start with unseasonably warm weather since the end of September making it harder to sell winter coats, jumpers and boots.

This reasoning does not but support Marks & Spencer´s arguments for a weak quarter, the ninth it reported smaller underlying general merchandise sales.

Shares in Marks & Spencer, Next (NXT.L) and Debenhams (DEB.L) were all lower on Tuesday.

In Scotland, retailers saw a year-on-year increase in sales in October: 2.1 percent more compared to October 2012 and despite many households still feeling the rough. Food purchases led the rise, as shown by data from the The Scottish Retail Consortium (SRC). This growth is reassuring after a September sales increase of 1.8 percent and a summer sales boost of 4 percent and 3.5 percent in July and August respectively, summarised the SRC. On the downside, October figures show like-for-like sales downed 0.5 percent on the previous year.

Elsewhere, Asos launched its Chinese website, keeping steady with its expansion overseas. Asos.cn is the eighth country-specific site for the e-tailer, which has seen soaring sales and the value of its shares nearly tripled to 57.32 pounds in the past year. Sales are expected to break through the 1 billion pounds´ landmark this financial year. Asos announced its first-half year (to August) profit before tax came in at 54.7 million pounds, up 37 percent on the year before.