After a festive season of frantic spending, now come the season of spending less. And Matalan is doing its bit, investing £35 million to lower prices on more than 700 family-focused products.

From today (8 January) the fashion, beauty and lifestyle retailer is delivering average price drops of 15% across core and new lines of everyday family essentials, with some prices falling by as much as 25%.

Announcements about price cuts have been a regular feature in the last 18 months as consumers have faced surging inflation and a raft of price rises across all sorts of products. Only recently in the beauty area, Superdrug also unveiled price cuts.

Coinciding with the launch of its own price reductions, Matalan is introducing multi-channel marketing campaign including digital and in-store activations.

Cuts have been made across popular womenswear pieces in denim, leisurewear and basics, as well as menswear and kids’ essentials, including baby. Bedding, bathroom essentials and home storage will also see price reductions.

Examples include women’s hoodies cut from £15 to £12.50; boys’ hoodies from £13 to £10 and pairs of men’s straight cut jeans priced £10 from £11.

Matalan said it has been able to reduce prices “through a more collaborative buying and sourcing strategy introduced by the company’s new senior leadership team and by passing on reduced input costs as inflation falls”.

It said today’s announcement “is the latest example of Matalan’s progress under the leadership of [new CEO] Jo Whitfield… who is driving efficiencies and improving ranges to offer customers better style, choice and value”.

Whitfield said: “The start of the year is always a tough time financially and this year, given how difficult 2023 was for so many families, it’ll be harder than ever. So for 2024 we want to start the year off differently. We’ve unlocked efficiencies at a time when inflation and input costs are starting to fall, enabling us to pass these savings on directly to our customers.”