I am responsible for the recent closure of high street shops...

skellysgirl

I have to admit the trouble of having to find a car parking space, then pay for parking does put me off shopping and has probably been the reason i now visit town for shopping maybe once every 3 month as opposed to weekly.
I also get annoyed with the attitude in shops, some are good, but i just got sick of hearing "if its not out we aint got any" often quoted whilst standing around looking bored.
Saying that, that's only if you could find staff, i don't enjoy wandering round and round looking for someone to help either. I know some staff are more helpful, but those type of staff tend to be the ones that look run off their feet and overstretched.
So i am pretty much of a believer that if the stores want us to deal with shopping ourselves...do it...only i found my answer in the internet, its cheaper, i dont have to battle through high streets full of prams and 15yr olds (before you start i have 2 young children). Plus you can shop around for the right price, earn money back and not have to carry it home...heaven.
So yes i do think we are partly to blame for these orginisations going down,
but so are the shopping centres and their greedy consumer attitude, the management at many of these orginisations for failing to modernise, appreciate their customers, and more importantly being more concerened with huge profits.

I am sort of welcoming this all happening as i feel we have come to a point where we are having some sort of revolution to the consumer market which has played us all for so many years. As in past times people get sick of being minipulated and always move on to the next thing.

cocktail

skellysgirl wrote: »

I have to admit the trouble of having to find a car parking space, then pay for parking does put me off shopping and has probably been the reason i now visit town for shopping maybe once every 3 month as opposed to weekly.
I also get annoyed with the attitude in shops, some are good, but i just got sick of hearing "if its not out we aint got any" often quoted whilst standing around looking bored.
Saying that, that's only if you could find staff, i don't enjoy wandering round and round looking for someone to help either. I know some staff are more helpful, but those type of staff tend to be the ones that look run off their feet and overstretched.
So i am pretty much of a believer that if the stores want us to deal with shopping ourselves...do it...only i found my answer in the internet, its cheaper, i dont have to battle through high streets full of prams and 15yr olds (before you start i have 2 young children). Plus you can shop around for the right price, earn money back and not have to carry it home...heaven.
So yes i do think we are partly to blame for these orginisations going down,
but so are the shopping centres and their greedy consumer attitude, the management at many of these orginisations for failing to modernise, appreciate their customers, and more importantly being more concerened with huge profits.

I am sort of welcoming this all happening as i feel we have come to a point where we are having some sort of revolution to the consumer market which has played us all for so many years. As in past times people get sick of being minipulated and always move on to the next thing.

this is so true. though i am no champion of supermarkets they often offer cheaper prices and reasonable quality than many of the other shops and most often the staff are helpful in the aisles. Money savvy wannabes--(hopefully most of the members here ) would agree that if u get the same thing cheaper somewhere, why would u purchase it at a costlier price.

lincroft1710

nickmason - interesting post, but I am not totally convinced.

fc123

A._Badger wrote: »

What's pretty clear from this thread (and most local shop owners have known it for years) is that the real villains of the piece here are greedy local councils, using 'Green' excuses to ramp-up parking charges, thus deterring even more potential customers from the High St.

Add this to the swingeing rents and business charges and it's pretty obvious that, even ignoring the advantages of scale the supermarkets have, individual shops stand little chance of competing.

The irony is that when local shopping areas collapse and die, first in the queue of hand-wringers are usually the same local councillors who, at best, stood by and watched this happen and, at worst, actually caused the demise!

I should add, I am not a shopkeeper and have no connection with retail - I have just watched this happening for years, with growing frustration.

Funny you shoiuld mention this...I have a nice man from the council popping i for A Chat in a few days time.
I have my LIST ready. He is upset that all the niche local shops are closing down (and we are a money spinner for the council0 but fails to understand that Starbucks and Costa take the serious £££ and set the rent levels for the area...all on min wage staff. Plus the profits leave the area.

He won't be able to change the way things work but at least he is showing an interest.

The Killer for us is that the very same council have re-located 1000's of workers to another part of the city (last yr) and the remainder are going this week.
It has wiped out our ''Everyday'' sales...which renders us unprofitable (add that to the rent increase based on recent chain lettings).

I am sure the OP is as well dressed, well fed (in a nutritional rather than calorific way) and well read as Tesco/WalMart/Sainsbury would wish all their customers to be.

Shame...not enough for me.

fc123

And can I just say (because I am on The (cheap) Wine tonight.....cheapest is not the best, cheap is just...well.....cheap.

scousethife

Sapphire wrote: »

Doing this will severely limit your choice of reading matter, since supermarkets generally have a selection of poor-quality rubbish when it comes to [STRIKE]books[/STRIKE]checkout staff

Corals

I agree a lot of the High Street shops are going to suffer, with Supermarkets definitely gaining more customer loyalty. That said, people are now spending their money more wisely and sometimes cheaper is not always the best option especially when it comes to clothing if after a couple of washes it looks like an old rag.

I love shopping when I can afford it, and this year bought a couple of dresses from Boden and the quality was terrible, I then discovered a great shop called White Stuff, and their dresses were better quality than Boden (approx. £35 - £40 cheaper). They are also expanding in the credit crunch with 3 new stores openings in the next month.

I have also found M&S quality to be rather poor in the last couple of years, I think the shops that will survive are the ones that can deliver good quality clothing at middle of the range prices. I also think the set up of the store and how they treat their employees is of key importance, if the staff are happy in their jobs, well trained and selling good quality products it creates a good atmosphere for customers and increases repeat visits.

There's nothing worse than walking into a shop and having half a dozen assistants follow you round trying to coax you to buy something, and vice versa walking into a shop where all of the staff are miserable is just as dull.

A._Badger

nickmason wrote: »

I might get bored of saying this - but not yet. The real villains of the piece are not local councils. This is starting to seem like the biggest con perpetrated on the british people; all the blame for central government profligacy (either direct or mandated) is being dumped on local councils. We have very little choice in what we do.

<snipped for space>

I can't speak for your council, but I can about several others in areas where I have lived and worked and where I have had this discussion time and again with frustrated residents and shop owners.

There is no doubt, as you say, that central government (particularly the present one) has imposed unfair burdens on councils and made them the whipping-boys for some of its sillier policies.

That said, many councils (possibly not yours, but that's impossible for us to know) operate a militantly anti-car policy and as the commenters here have shown, that is one of the prime reasons why people have deserted the High St.

It is patently ludicrous to insist that a young mother with two or three children use public transport to get her weekly shopping (and many councils are at the forefront of this sort of advocacy). If you make it difficult, or expensive to use her car in town, she will simply patronise one of the disfiguring, town-killing shopping complexes, which have sprung up like so many malignant mushrooms all across the country. And who could blame her?

Too many councils have become the playgrounds for green-driven planners and transport hobbyists (look the ludicrous 'traffic calming'; measures adopted so widely). Drivers are faced not only by a shortage of parking spaces and the high cost of using them, in many areas, but capricious and officious traffic wardens who are there, in many instances, less to control parking than to raise money.

As for the 'need' for this money, a cull of the non-jobs advertised in the Guardian each week ('diversity advisors' 'five a day campaigners', council officers with private industry salaries and public sector pensions and the like) might help compensate for the loss of income, were common sense to prevail.

GlennTheBaker

Derby City Council have recently approved plans to increase parking charges across all council-owned car parks for stays up to 4 hours whilst reducing charges for stays over 4 hours. They have also introduced charges for Sunday parking - the same as Monday to Saturday. What a fabulous idea! Do these clowns have any grasp of reality? Do they really think that people will think "I know, I'll stay in the city for over 4 hours now that its a bit cheaper than it used to be"?

fc123

A._Badger wrote: »

nickmason wrote: »

I might get bored of saying this - but not yet. The real villains of the piece are not local councils. This is starting to seem like the biggest con perpetrated on the british people; all the blame for central government profligacy (either direct or mandated) is being dumped on local councils. We have very little choice in what we do.

<snipped for space>

I can't speak for your council, but I can about several others in areas where I have lived and worked and where I have had this discussion time and again with frustrated residents and shop owners.

There is no doubt, as you say, that central government (particularly the present one) has imposed unfair burdens on councils and made them the whipping-boys for some of its sillier policies.

That said, many councils (possibly not yours, but that's impossible for us to know) operate a militantly anti-car policy and as the commenters here have shown, that is one of the prime reasons why people have deserted the High St.

It is patently ludicrous to insist that a young mother with two or three children use public transport to get her weekly shopping (and many councils are at the forefront of this sort of advocacy). If you make it difficult, or expensive to use her car in town, she will simply patronise one of the disfiguring, town-killing shopping complexes, which have sprung up like so many malignant mushrooms all across the country. And who could blame her?

Too many councils have become the playgrounds for green-driven planners and transport hobbyists (look the ludicrous 'traffic calming'; measures adopted so widely). Drivers are faced not only by a shortage of parking spaces and the high cost of using them, in many areas, but capricious and officious traffic wardens who are there, in many instances, less to control parking than to raise money.

As for the 'need' for this money, a cull of the non-jobs advertised in the Guardian each week ('diversity advisors' 'five a day campaigners', council officers with private industry salaries and public sector pensions and the like) might help compensate for the loss of income, were common sense to prevail.

I will confess...on this board post my (cheap) wine drinking session........I got trapped into the once a week shop by car for nearly a decade. After DD was born, I couldn't do it all anymore. One kid walking around local shops is fun, but 1 kid plus baby, I couldn't manage it any longer, so I used Asad or Safeway once a week, every week for years.

Looking back, we did still use local shops for bits and bobs, but I got caught up in the 'Easy option'. In my defence, I was working full time plus hours and the schedule of 2 kids was a logistical nightmare ( 7 yr gap), dropping one to school, other to nursery etc etc.
But in 2004, I read Felicity Lawrence and saw the light.

I can be a bit 'holier than thou'' about local shopping nowadays as youngest is 14, and I live in an area seeped with fab, local shops that I can walk or bus to.

ETA What's a 5 a day campaigner, how much pay? Sounds like fun that one...I would do it.