No Wonder the High Street is Dying

gardenia101

delain wrote: »

The problem with mobile hairdressers is that they have a reputation as being an OAP thing... They could do with some good pr, or taking ads in shops/paper stating that they can do more than mullets and trims!

I don't know why more people don't use them - I love mine & have used her for years (started when my 2 year old had a wobble in a salon & I was asked to leave...)

She trims my wild, unruly hair & my 2 childrens for £16, & will often touch up my roots if I CBA to get it done included in this (with my own dye). Bargain. I do have to clean up after her but it isn't a big deal. She doesn't advertise, just get work by word of mouth & works 1 day in a salon.

Re: Amazon deliveries - mine always come by Royal Mail & I'm in Wiltshire. Only order small stuff like DVDs, shoes etc. Love the service & I'm 5 mins walk from my sorting office.

Since I've stopped driving I've tried to support my local town with my shopping trolley where I can. But my local buses aren't usually the low entry type so I have to lug a trolley up 3 steps through a narrow entry & down the bus as there is no pram/wheelchair space - not easy to do. I don't mind walking but it adds an extra hour onto the shopping trip & I can't do it in the dark (as I'm partially sighted). Also no fun in the rain/snow/freezing weather.

My high street has changed so much - we have 6 mobile phone shops & 8 charity shops & the compulsory Starbucks & Costa (which are always rammed) & Poundland & a huge Wilkinsons. Not much else really - a few other coffee shops, some clothes shops (Peacocks & Bon Marche don't know how long they will be around for, La Senza has gone). There isn't a lot that I want to go in for. I do all my banking & "stuff" online, so I tend to just pop in to the greengrocer or the Little Waitrose for the odd, bizarre ingrediant.

Radsteral

i try to buy from internet as much as i can. cheaper easier and unless its a soffa or something very big that i havent seen in shop i ll boy online
the one that fails me mostly is royal mail...today at home me , my wife and my 2 year old son that, as soon as a little knock on the door, he ll alert the whole neighbourhood and probably police;) That much he loves it when some one arrives to our home .
But again, we found the amazon delivery red paper from royal mail...to collect in royal mail depot !! no parking there 2 quid for 30 mins, so you guess how much we like to go to high street

Road_Hog

delain wrote: »

The problem with mobile hairdressers is that they have a reputation as being an OAP thing... They could do with some good pr, or taking ads in shops/paper stating that they can do more than mullets and trims!

The problem for me (that I find when reading their ads), is that they charge as much as a salon but without the guarantees that you get when dealing with a business. Personally it isn't a problem for me, as being a male with a receding hairline, a pair of clippers sorts my hair out.

But when I look at the adverts they want £25 at least just for a hair cut. The missus says it's only about £5 more (max) to visit a salon. They don't have the overheads that a salon does, it only takes them half an hour to do a hair cut (no highlights or anything), so where do they think they can get away with charging £50 an hour for cutting hair?

Sorry, but I don't think cutting hair is a £50 per hour profession, £20 an hour is nearer the mark.

fc123

lostinrates wrote: »

Is there indication of how much of their take is UK buyers? My impression is a lot of the bread and butter to those places is visiting people and temporary residents?

(and a very good thing that is to, bringing money back into uk)

The big London shops are in a whole different league and can't be used to benchmark what happens in provincial high st's nor even the ones with stores in malls out of London. I have insider figures

I do have not secret figures though for one such big London store. Avg UK customer spend is £70 (single transaction) against average overseas customer whose spend is £1350 (single transaction)

lostinrates wrote: »

The main reason the high street loses my custom is because there is increasing no such thing as a local highstreet but a national one, in somecases a global one. When everything looks the same in the same stores in strees in different places what it the draw? Now, if we had people making things there would be destinationplaces. Real individuality rules. E.g. The posher towns tend to have more antique shops...they sell one offs, or things that look like one offs, and people go to those shops to try and catch them.

I think LIR has the number one reason with cost being a very close second. Parking/lack of time/carrying maybe come 3rd.

The UK is no 1 for Clone High St's and the domination of all the good shoppping areas by the chain stores. Even Brighton is about 80% chains now whereas 15 years ago it couldn't have been more than 20%.
Most things our household buy online aren't cheaper but the same or higher price (due to postage costs) however it's the wider choice plus the convenience that does it for us.

This week was a spendy week with 5 deliveries;
A pair of exceedingly lush boots from my-wardobe.com (uber bargain as were £360 and went down to £63..last pair in my size :j) and some shoes.

A dozen jars of curry sauce from a lady in Dartford who makes it herself (and not available from any shops, just directly from her website) and I rarely by jar food but her stuff is exceptional.

Some sequin Ugg boots that DD saw on one of our models, fell in love so googled and found them 5 mins later.......@ 18 YO she would never tramp around shops hunting for something.

A book by Kapferer from Amazon (wouldn't find this type of book anywhere locally)

..and I think a pack of eyelashes for DD turned up as they can't be bought locally.

Kennyboy66 wrote: »

So you point out something that is self evidently wrong ?

A rent free shop would easily compete with online prices.

Rents are crucial as they are fixed, paid in advance and almost impossible to reduce in the medium term.
A greengrocer pays £15800 to rent a year for a 785 square foot shop on a high street near me (Liverpool).

You probably haven't got the first idea about how expensive it is just to get traffic to a website, never mind properly integrate orders, payments deliveries and returns.
Amazon took years before they were profitable - Ocado aren't there yet, and there is no end of websites that have failed for numerous reasons.

Clothing will be one area that will always struggle to compete on price alone (although it will compete on convenience) - not least because in the case of womens online clothing approx 30% of product is returned - vastly more than shop returns and it is costly to handle returns and repackage them for sale.


People will pay for service - its just that the UK isn't great at retail service. If people bought purely on price, women might be getting their hair cut and coloured at home by mobile hairdressers at half the price of going to a salon. In general they don't.

The chart Hamish posted was fascinating but were the figs for USA 5 years old?


We had stores for 20 years but now have a webshop as part of our business. The costs are different but still lower than a B + M (bricks and mortar) set up overall. It's hard to divvy up as we manufacture and supply wholesale so photo shoots (which are expensive) are used for several parts of the business.

Some B + M problems do go but we found they are just replaced with different IL (Internet-Land) problems for example...

1; Shoplifters both pro's and grab and run druggies were a constant drain.

2; wear it once, damage it and return as a faulty item and get a refund.

Both the above would really affect profits in a B+M but you still have the equivalent in IL.
The direct comparable to no 1 is the 'didn't receive it' despite the signature and address being on the RM website. They claim it's not them and someone else signed for it and faked it and so on. You don't get a refund from RM as it was delivered so usually, you have to refund. If you don't, they charge-back anyway. This one is getting more common.
No way near as bad as facing a desperate addict though....have done that a few times solo and glad I will never have to do it again.

2; wear it once, rip it and return.......just as many of those as in a B+M but easier to handle as we repair and return which we are entitled to do. As we make it we know when a stitching line has been unpicked on purpose.

property.advert

Road_Hog wrote: »

The problem for me (that I find when reading their ads), is that they charge as much as a salon but without the guarantees that you get when dealing with a business. Personally it isn't a problem for me, as being a male with a receding hairline, a pair of clippers sorts my hair out.

But when I look at the adverts they want £25 at least just for a hair cut. The missus says it's only about £5 more (max) to visit a salon. They don't have the overheads that a salon does, it only takes them half an hour to do a hair cut (no highlights or anything), so where do they think they can get away with charging £50 an hour for cutting hair?

Sorry, but I don't think cutting hair is a £50 per hour profession, £20 an hour is nearer the mark.

I could serve 3 customers in my shop in the same time as it takes to come to your place, service you and then get back. That is why it isn't cheaper.

You must also factor in your costs: fuel, parking, time, convenience etc.