The changing face of the high street

bo_drinker

Tesco profits are up 10 per cent though, and they will only ever rise and rise as the rest of the town sinks to its knees.

fc123

bo_drinker wrote: »

Tesco profits are up 10 per cent though, and they will only ever rise and rise as the rest of the town sinks to its knees.

Can I recomend Tescopoly by Andrew Simms again plus Shopped by Joanna Blythman.
No doubt, Tesco profits are up as their suppliers are screwed down further on margin. Wonder how much of the profit came from savings on wages with the intro of self serve tills?


In Shopped, it gives a time cycle of the damage to a local area when a big supermarket opens.......roughly takes 3 -4 years to kill off a lot of the local stores. Sorry, I can't quote it as I lent the book out.

For a time, people get the best of both worlds and wonder what the fuss is about......then the effects kick in over time.
It only takes a small drop in T/O to render a small business unviable for the owner....but they keep at it for as long as possible.

Been busy reading about Baugur today. They own 3 units next to me.....perhaps this crunch will have a semi silver lining (well, selfishly speaking) after all.
Got a semi positive reply to my request to LL. I can't believe it!
They are prepared to negotiate with us :eek:

Pobby

I do sympathise fc123. I had a rent review in 1990, right at the top of the last boom and boy did they raise it. Imho it`s the worse time to get one. Property boom, landlord wants more money, followed by a down turn in the economy so you may expect turnover to fall.

In my industry we are blighted by online sales. Low over heads so low margins. Even some suppliers are letting the ``bedroom`` boys have their products. Certain wholesalers are using the web to retail.

Personally I am glad I am out of retail. Very hard to make money these days.

Max_Headroom_3

My high street and surrounding area is fast becoming a ghost town. A few independents gone, Dorothy Perkins gone, Rosebys going, Dixons gone a while ago (never re-let), etc.

Problem is, the more that go, the less incentive there is for people to come into town (bear in mind they have to pay to park too, unlike out of town shopping centres), and the less people come in, the more they'll go.

Only places that seem busy are the mobile phone shops. Why do people need so many mobile phones? I bought one years ago, still got it, it works so why buy a new one?

Pobby

Max, you shocked me! You do know that you are missing out on 3g and the latest mobiles have a built in teas made to boot!

lostinrates

Max_Headroom wrote: »

.....Only places that seem busy are the mobile phone shops. Why do people need so many mobile phones? I bought one years ago, still got it, it works so why buy a new one?

LOL.

DH and I signed on to the same UK network some 5ish years ago. Gt the standard free phones. Kept them but on PaYG when when to Italy....got Italian sims and put them in.

We did get new phones this yearm gong back on contract, but mine had acident involving soaking some hore feed and oil, and DH just prefers the old one. I genuinely hope our old phones have many years in them, they are perfect.

fc123

Pobby wrote: »

I do sympathise fc123. I had a rent review in 1990, right at the top of the last boom and boy did they raise it. Imho it`s the worse time to get one. Property boom, landlord wants more money, followed by a down turn in the economy so you may expect turnover to fall.

In my industry we are blighted by online sales. Low over heads so low margins. Even some suppliers are letting the ``bedroom`` boys have their products. Certain wholesalers are using the web to retail.

Personally I am glad I am out of retail. Very hard to make money these days.

I wrote this out the other night and it vanished :rolleyes: ..I'll try again....
James credmond used the word 'Struggling' and I hate to come over as sounding or feeling like that. Sounds really negative and like ones given up.

It feels that a more 'superhuman' effort is needed on my part.

I wrote to a trade journo I'm in touch with 2 wks back and, as I was writng about this and that, I had a LBM.
My sector changes continually and we have always been involved in clothing/fashion on the edges STS, consequently, we have changed direction a few times (over 22 years) as fashions change. Generally, this applies to the product as well as the retail environment it is sold from. All normal stuff.

With the rising costs over the past 5 years combined with price deflation (masked a bit by increased volumes) we no longer employ a team of staff.

We were always aware that we would end up too old to sell our own product directly to the customer....or we would just go out of date one day.....I always figured I'd do something else 'When I'm 50....and wear lots of purple''; as in the poem

What I realised is that the core basis of our business model is the thing that is now out of date.....and has been made unviable by soaring property prices and rents

Have an idea + concept, make + buy in product, find shop in right area.....and wait for the customer to walk in and buy. Sell plenty to cover costs and make a profit. Simple.

My e-tail sales are 100 times our best case forecast back in July...more as we have had to turn down orders of thousands as we can't get enough product actually made to meet the demand (+ that's without the cashflow nightmare)....so it's not what I sell that's going out of date or is no longer viable, it is how I sell it.

Now I know this I can feel the best way to go forward. It's just the doing that's going to be a stress.

fc123

Pobby wrote: »

In my industry we are blighted by online sales. Low over heads so low margins. Even some suppliers are letting the ``bedroom`` boys have their products. Certain wholesalers are using the web to retail.

This is the fundamental change. Indie stores buying in products from wholesalers is going to die out...due to the above.
I have bought in all different stuff over the years. When we gave up Vintage clothing in 1999, I bought in pricey branded stock...got shot of that in 2003.....started on more niche labels...most of those then went mainstream (in places like H of Fraser)..then Hof F became a Bauger stable, many of those labels are mainly sold on-line now.
Small Indie boutiques are still around but not in the volume to support these large, wholesale businesses.

Earlier in the thread, experience/services was mentioned....but on a serioius note, these are the types of businesses that do better in Real Life Land....like Hotel Chocolat.

What is different this time is that our LL is prepared to listen to our case rather than just go for the jugular....well I think so.
Our premises would make a perfect Hotel Chocolat.

What is missing from mainstream retail nowadays is passion...no not that type....:D and enthusiasm for what one is selling.
Min wage sales floor staff on 4 hr contracts employed by corporate,wealthy, faceless owners....made to serve with sentences memorised from a script...well no wonder people purchase online.

Cannon_Fodder

Max_Headroom wrote: »

My high street and surrounding area is fast becoming a ghost town. A few independents gone, Dorothy Perkins gone, Rosebys going, Dixons gone a while ago (never re-let), etc.

Problem is, the more that go, the less incentive there is for people to come into town (bear in mind they have to pay to park too, unlike out of town shopping centres), and the less people come in, the more they'll go.

Only places that seem busy are the mobile phone shops. Why do people need so many mobile phones? I bought one years ago, still got it, it works so why buy a new one?

and why are there so MANY phones shops...? Every brand/network, in each high street competing away...


I am reminded of Douglas Adams' "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe". Switch mobile phone for shoe, its uncanny;

"Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet — people, cities, shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the numbers of these shoe shops were increasing. It's a well known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the shops proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops. Result - collapse, ruin and famine."


Plus the original Hitchhikers opening, again switch mobile phone for digital watch;

"an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches."


Genius. Prophetic?

wymondham

Things must be getting bad as there are lots more pretty balloons appearing tied to shops/cars round this way.... Does this really make people buy things?