Mary Portas take on dying High St's

dopester

StevieJ wrote: »

I was looking for a new battery charger for my camera, options were

High street store
Branded item £60
Non-Branded equivalent £40

Ebay
Non-Branded equivalent (new) £7.99.

Nuff said.

You'd think so wouldn't you, but. I was amazed over at the other place.

STRs.. who I expected to be money-careful... but even today willing to spend thousands on camera gear.. but having to be premium gear which they are complaining is rising in price.

Luxury margins being maintained at the top end... but how can mid-range compete for you, and your obvious logic, which makes sense?

Perhaps not with cameras alone, but I wouldn't want to be a retailer trying to sell the mid-range £60 item. Prefer to sell the top-gear at high end price £1000 price for example, and scrape of maybe a £200 profit per sale.

stumpycat

treliac wrote: »

Just think, in ten years time, some entrepreneur will come along to our high streets, populated solely by cafes, hairdressers and pawnbrokers, and they will open a shop selling clothes - real life ones that you can touch and try on.

It will be a complete novelty, a hugely successful moneyspinner, and a whole new way of shopping will rise like a phoenix!

This is what I really hope will happen, sooner rather than later! People seem to have started to get disenchanted with the sell-all stores, so hopefully will vote with their footfall and cash.

As for self service tills, I usually avoid them like the plague as I end up shouting at the damn things. Recently, in a rush, I had to buy some batteries in ASDA and felt quite pleased with myself that I managed to scan & pay with no trouble. I then wandered round town setting off every shop entrance security alarm until a very kind man at W.H. Smith de-activated them for me! :embarasse

lemonjelly

fc123 wrote: »

Local communities don't get the full benefit of the cash spent in the area..the profit gets sucked out and a few crumbs ~in the form of 4 hour contract Min wage employment get sprinkled back.......then they talk it up as being 'wunderful' for the community as it is all 'Flexi' work.

Tax credits then mop up the small snag of the pay being dismal.

fc123 This is a phenomenally brilliant and important point that we all need to be aware of - also kind of hinted at by StevieJ with his reference to "another job lost" regarding self scanning points in supermarkets.

If a town has no money/all residents are on or around the poverty line, they'll have little/no disposable income. Nothing to spend = death of their high street.

Brierley hill (near dudley) was a big area for manufacturing. There was a major steelworks there, which got closed down. A lot of other local industry went with it. The site was cleared, eventually it became the nightmare that is the merry hill centre (believe me there is f*** all merry about it). A westfield development currently, built by thee richardson brothers. Because no-one wanted the land, due to toxicity, they were sold it with no planning restrictions. They built a horrible, sprawling mall. Massively high rents, staffed with part timers on minimum wage.

Brierley hill used to be a thriving, but small local town. It died completely. Their high street is now fast food takeaways, & charity shops. The impact on the community is massive.

Knock on effects were wider - not all local people got jobs there. It has been classed as one of the most deprived areas of the UK for several years. Education etc has falen off a cliff. No investment. The locals didnt have the incomes anymore, therefore couldn't afford to go shopping (either in the mh centre, or their local shops). Net results, local businesses started failing, as their customers fell. Passing trade fell, as everyone was now heading to this new shopping mecca.

Worse, surrounding towns are dying too. And still no-one has addressed some of the issues (such as the massive increases in traffic) owing to the fact that the site was sold & built without any planning restrictions.

Malls like this are a blight on society in so many ways...

GracieP

fc123 wrote: »

I was quite a fan...and I have attended a talk she gave at a trade fair which was much more chewy than her telly chat...............she spoke a lot about retail theatre, more selling online but rents issue came up in questions plus the far smaller margins that indies achieve (so not leaving enough to pay a similar rent to a chainstore ...who then set the higher rent values for the area) and she couldn't really respond................
................She associates/employs top people in her field and seems very successful but I agree with you, her advice seemed a bit dated to me too.

I think a lot of people like Mary Portas were lucky to be in the right place at the right time as far as their own skills and careers were concerned. However the current market is very different from where they learned their skills and they don't know enough to be that helpful where it really matters anymore.

I don't know that much about Portas specifically, I only watched her charity shop 3 part-er over the last few weeks, as I know one of the people in the last episode. But I can't see the point of her. She brought nothing to the table that many charity shops haven't been doing for over a decade. I know of shops that take over 5 times her improved figure in the Orpington shop. And it was funny how they didn't go to the shop ran by Shruti and Bev, who were in the last episode because it is so much more attractive than her makeover in Orpington.

(And they all manage to do this without showing the utter contempt she did for the volunteers. I'll be the first to say managing volunteers can be a head-wrecking nightmare, but while the primary purpose of a charity shop is fundraising it is also a representitive of the charity itself and treating people the way she did was detrimental to the image of the charity.)

dopester

stumpycat wrote: »

This is what I really hope will happen, sooner rather than later! People seem to have started to get disenchanted with the sell-all stores, so hopefully will vote with their footfall and cash.

They just won't though, when more and more people are watching their pennies. It will get worse for independents trying to compete with similar products against them. Basic low-cost necessities aren't that profitable without volume, and you'd be competing against those who can do it better.

Whereas the independent has a good chance if they are selling higher-margin speciality/designer/tech-advanced/innovative lines.

Footballers wives, bankers, top-lawyers... still lot of wealth about... the independent still has a market-place, with the right approach, shop in right area, intelligent marketing/positioning.

Harry_Powell

dopester wrote: »

No offence.. but you and Harry don't sound like people who would pay £500 for an impulse buy dress in fc123's old-shop (and say a £300 margin). Maybe with her tempting you with new shoes just in to go with it (art/skill of selling), or hat, or take a deposit from a select import you're expecting from Italy in 3 weeks. Higher margins to see the independent retailer compete, with their own edge, and succeed..

You're right, I wouldn't buy a £500 dress, for myself or my girlfriend!

TBH, I've never understood the mentality of people who have to buy a 'label' in order to feel good about themselves. If there is obvious quality to the goods, then I would pay a premium but many of the designer labels come from the same Far Eastern sweatshops as M&S and other own label department stores. If someone needs to have 'Armani' plastered all over your clothes in order to feel good about themselves, then they should invest their money in counselling instead because they clearly have issues that need to be addressed.

Hopefully, as a result of the recession and HPC, we'll see a return to people looking for value and quality in the products they purchase, instead of blindly buying a 'name' in the mistaken belief that they're getting what they pay for in quality and in order to impress others.

dopester

Harry_Powell wrote: »

You're right, I wouldn't buy a £500 dress, for myself or my girlfriend!

TBH, I've never understood the mentality of people who have to buy a 'label' in order to feel good about themselves. If there is obvious quality to the goods, then I would pay a premium but many of the designer labels come from the same Far Eastern sweatshops as M&S and other own label department stores. If someone needs to have 'Armani' plastered all over your clothes in order to feel good about themselves, then they should invest their money in counselling instead because they clearly have issues that need to be addressed.

I fully agree, but that is the world we live in... and I'm thinking from the independent retailers point of view, to survive and prosper in these conditions.

Come on... if some business-angel offered to back you with a shop in posh-ish area of Central London, with 1 year free rent.. with no nasty lease penalties thereafter, and budget of £80,000 to stock up... what would you sell? £3 t-shirts, tins of food on the cheap because approaching their use-by dates, poundland style hardware bits and pieces which are value to the end-customer?

Or perhaps higher-end security/monitoring -systems for the home? Or some other higher-value luxury/quality speciality appealing to higher profit customers? Not all the wealth has gone.

Harry_Powell

dopester wrote: »

I fully agree, but that is the world we live in... and I'm thinking from the independent retailers point of view, to survive and prosper in these conditions.

Come on... if some business-angel offered to back you with a shop in posh-ish area of Central London, with 1 year free rent.. with no nasty lease penalties thereafter, and budget of £80,000 to stock up... what would you sell? £3 t-shirts, tins of food on the cheap because approaching their use-by dates, poundland style hardware bits and pieces which are value to the end-customer?

Or perhaps higher-end security/monitoring -systems for the home? Or some other higher-value luxury/quality speciality appealing to higher profit customers? Not all the wealth has gone.

That scenario wouldn't happen though in real life. The 'Angel' is a business man/woman who would want a better return on their money than investing in other areas, so a rent free first year would be followed by escallating rents in the following years in order for them to get their return back. I believe that Punch Taverns run this business model. They get tenant landlords in and give them discounted rent and alcohol and once they start turning a profit, Punch start upping the ante until the tenant is paying them all their profit. Often the tenant goes under and Punch start again.

If you open a shop selling prestigious goods you need to be in a prestigious area, and rents for those shops don't come cheap. It can take a long time to become stablished and an independant could have run out of money long before this happens, whereas a chain can soak up losses in one area by offsetting profits from another.

dopester

Harry_Powell wrote: »

I believe that Punch Taverns run this business model. They get tenant landlords in and give them discounted rent and alcohol and once they start turning a profit, Punch start upping the ante until the tenant is paying them all their profit. Often the tenant goes under and Punch start again.

Ok, points-accepted.

However you can still get much better terms on a lease now than during the boom.

A friend-of-a-friend has set up a small shop, in a semi-wealthy village, selling a speciality range associated to health / mobility ect. Got a good deal on the lease. Doubt there are many items in their shop range at under £100... except for little extras to accompany main items. Not something the supermarkets are offering, and also aimed towards the older generation.

Taking my Mum out for a meal a few weeks back at a garden-centre... taken aback by the amount of pensioners in the restaurant. Not all of course, but many a pensioner has made their money, has bought their annuity in the good times, and has good disposable pension income - to spend as needed. The bill for a 2 simple meals, coffees.... astonishing. Close to £40. And yet there was hardly an empty table, and almost as soon as one set of people left, others came in.

So if Labour did a lottery, and from it you were selected/commanded to use your £80K savings (just making that up as I don't know what savings you have) to set up a small shop anywhere in the UK of your choice.... where would you set up and what would you sell?

It is all well-and-good to knock brand-expensive items, or luxury speciality items at very high prices... and want people to look to value/quality at a good honest price... but if you go that way with how you set up your local shop, you're competing against supermarkets.

Do you really want to wait in your local small independent shop for customers to come in.. like DD with his wife's shoe-shop for kids... when those with less money to spend will either choose supermarkets, jumble sales, hand-me-downs, ebay? I suggest speciality lines and higher margin is the way to go, together with location, if you want to survive and prosper.

StevieJ

Good to see Woollies back - ONLINE