Designer bags fly off shelves

Shoppers queued outside Sainsbury's stores before opening time to snap up the £5 Anya Hindmarch creation.

At the Perton branch in South Staffordshire fashion fans were so keen to get their hands on the bags they started queuing at 2am.

Other stores across the region, including Wolverhampton, Reedswood Way in Walsall, Oldbury, Merry Hill, Kidderminster, Cannock and Stafford, also witnessed shoppers turning up early to get their hands on the bags.

The designer must-haves – which bear the slogan "I'm not a plastic bag" – sold out within an hour at 450 Sainsbury's branches nationwide. Only 30 limited edition bags went on sale at each store. Even models Twiggy and Brownhills girl Erin O'Connor put in requests for them, the chain said.

Hindmarch developed the reusable cotton bags with the We Are What We Do movement to help cut the number of plastic carriers used in the UK.

Scores of the bags were attracting bids of up to £100 on eBay this morning.

Sainsbury's spokeswoman Hannah Chance said tickets were handed out to shoppers queuing for the bags before stores opened at 8am.

"They sold out in just under an hour across the UK. People were queuing during the night and there were a lot of queues at stores from 6am today," she said.

People were queuing at Sainsbury's in Reedswood Way, Walsall, from 5.45am. Store manager Paul Davis said tickets were given out to the first 30 in the queue and within 15 minutes of the store opening at 8am they were sold.

He added: "We had expected a rush on the bags as we took a number of calls about them before today."

Ian Sutton, duty manager at Sainsbury's in Withymoor, near Brierley Hill, said: "Although we didn't open until 8am, there were people waiting outside at 5.15am," he said.

"We had 30 to sell at £5 a time and they were all gone up in 10 minutes."