No Wonder the High Street is Dying

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Thrugelmir wrote: »

There's no indication of Liberty, Harrods or Fortnum and Mason going bust.

And Ferregamo just agreed to pay £1000 a square foot for rent on Bond street.

Which is equally as irrelevant to the story of the average UK high street as the success of Harrods.

Graham_Devon

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

It's primarily the fault of you and everyone that thinks like you...

You choose to shop elsewhere because it's cheaper. So high street shops will close and fewer people will have a job.

Simples.

The problem with the text above is that it's simply too "simples".

There is little point in me trying to get you to think of property and rental costs here. But that is one, if not the largest factor in the high streets demise.

Yes, individuals are also part of the demise of the high street. We could choose to do all our shopping there and pay a larger price.

But by far the biggest problem for the highstreet is high property costs and high business charges.

Blaming the individuals misses the point completely. Business is all about attracting the customers. Not hoping the customers come to you regardless of the service and price and then blaming them for the demise.

Councils are forcing shoppers out by way of high charges, poor ammenities and the like. Indoor shopping centres are still doing quite well, and theres a reason for that, management of the centre. Clean toilets (just toilets in some high streets are a bonus) and (though not something the high street can help) clean air, no wind, no rain.

Councils need to urgently rethink if they want to keep high streets going. However, for all the meaningless words, I don't think they are actually all that concerned. They can't get a local retailer to pay for a new library in way of a bribe for planning permission.

It's not the shoppers who are destroying the high street. It's mainly councils and landlords. Nearly every big chain who has been on the edge has blamed rental contracts and prices for the premises.

And to be honest, some of the high street stores don't really help themselves. Have you been into a WH Smiths recently and just taken a glance at the price of things?

On a sidenote, I'm not sure why you are attacking me / us for complaining about the high street. You appear to have written a post telling people who are not complaining to stop being surprised this is happening and stop complaining about it, when to be completely honest, for all of the threads on here about the high street, no one is "complaining" and none of us are surprised. Appears you are trying to say "look I was right" again, but no one has disagreed with you in the first place.

funkyfreddy9k

erm... kinda dubious stats when several countries including the USA's figures were 5 years old!

dtsazza

Graham_Devon wrote: »

There is little point in me trying to get you to think of property and rental costs here. But that is one, if not the largest factor in the high streets demise.

Aren't you and Hamish both arguing the same thing, though? Namely, that it is more expensive to run a business on the high street than the internet (because of property and rental costs), so consumers choose to shop online instead (because it's cheaper).

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Graham_Devon wrote: »

by far the biggest problem for the highstreet is high property costs . .

You can go and rent a medium sized shop on my local (relatively expensive) high street, suitable for say, electronics retailing, for approx £30,000 a year.

But then you need to spend money on wages for people to run it.

A store manager, around 25K a year. At least another 40K for sales staff. Then there's advertising costs, the business rates will be north of 20K. Utilities another 12K. Add in cleaning costs, repairs, HR expenses, accountancy, not to mention giving HMRC 20% of everything you sell, and it all adds up.

So if you sell electronics, at an average retail margin of 25%, from Graham's Electronics Shop, you'll probably need to gross north of £600,000 a year just to break even.

Whereas I can set myself up as https://www.HamishesElectronicsEmporium.com, run a website for peanuts, reach many more customers, drop ship goods directly to your customers from my wholesaler, carry no inventory, have virtually no overheads, and make a profit running a 5% margin.

It wouldn't matter if your rent and rates were free.

You still couldn't even begin to compete.

The high street is dying because you and people like you want to buy cheap stuff. For no other reason. You could make every shop in the land rent free and they still couldn't compete with internet shopping prices.

Road_Hog

macaque wrote: »

(the Brits have become a very light fingered race)

No they haven't. However, we are importing 600k people every year that have different values to us 'Brits' and they see no problem in shop lifting, just like they see no problem in killing swans and eating them or distilling their own alcohol.

Please don't confuse the antics of the native British and those immigrants who have different values. I know NuLabour and the Guardianistas will tell us that we're being enriched by multiculturalism, but the reality is very different.

Pobby

Internet shopping is a mini consumer revolution. I gave up on " bricks and mortar " retailing years ago. Sold technical stuff. Got fed up with doing demos for customers only to find that they purchased elsewhere. Mind you , had much mirth when they came crawling back with damaged and faulty items. Or goods they had no idea how to operate. Still, it is evident to me that the net is on the way up and no stopping it.

Proxy

I think graham and Hamish are secret lovers.

Thrugelmir

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

It will always be cheaper to operate one warehouse in the middle of nowhere with a website than a chain of 100 shops on high streets up and down the land.

Quite the opposite. Distribution centres are placed in prime locations and built with scale in mind.

There's too much retail space. That's the issue for the High Street along with shopping malls and out of town super stores.

Hopefully this will be an opportunity to rebuild town centres and return them to 24/7 use. With a mix of business, homes and leisure.

pqrdef

nearlynew wrote: »

The biggest problem, as in other areas of society, is the high property prices and rents that shopkeepers have to pay.

That'll be why the high streets are full of charity shops, while the successful retailers flock to malls, where the rents are astronomical.

Businessmen will always find something to moan about, but it's quite unusual for them to have any real insight into the true causes of their problems.