No Wonder the High Street is Dying

grizzly1911

Other reasons other than just price, councils and rent charges.

• Fuel costs/Transport/parking charges.
• Choice.
• Availability
• P--s poor customer service/poor advice in certain stores.
• Next day delivery, even on modestly priced items.
• Discounts for "bulk" purchasing
• Many stores aren't interested in after sales service any more and you are reliant on "manufacturer" anyway, despite SOGA. You might as well take the risk.
• Throw away society - things aren't built to be repaired so no loyalty.
• Customers can see through the "brand" veneer more easily.
• Many areas/consumers were reliant on mail order companies anyway so with Credit Cards and Internet purchasing not that dissimilar.
• As for "drop shipping", that is no different to some of the major retailers these days. Can't remember the last time a"white goods item" actually came from the retailer. In many cases they will even charge for delivery.

lostinrates

Thrugelmir wrote: »

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

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)

kabayiri

Aspirational, innit.

Quite a while back big manufacturers / retailers worked it out.

In the past, a lot of lower income people still wanted the things rich people could afford, its just they knew they couldn't have them because of price.

So....
- get expensive things made cheaper elsewhere
- give poor people access to credit
- crank up the marketing machine to 11 so that poor people realise they can have these things

Internet shopping is just a way of servicing that demand now.

lostinrates

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.

crash123

I used to have a shop but now sell on the web.
No more 9 - 5. Working in a typical high street shop is mind numbing so now I have more time for forums such as this.
Less hours worked for the same money.

I do think that the big retailers do need shops as well as the web.
I went to Clarks shoe shop tried on the boots I liked and then got them to post them to me in the colours I wanted. you got a bigger discount this way.

crash123

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.

have you seen how many antiques shop sell on the web?

lostinrates

crash123 wrote: »

have you seen how many antiques shop sell on the web?

Yes, and how many have left less posh towns compared to the smarter towns.

Idiophreak

The death of the high street is really a complete non-event to me. I've sat and watched Primark and Poundland take over from C&A and Woolworths, just like the rest of the country. I'm now seeing charity shops and boards up all over the place..am I bothered? Nope.

The councils are making it clear that they don't want people to drive to their cities to shop, so I don't do it. I drive to a nice, convenient, out of town supermarket for my weekly shop and buy pretty much everything else online. I feel great about it. I don't have to go round dingy city centres, get hassled by the chavs or walk through vomit. My shops (except the supermarkets) are open late every day and all day Sunday...in fact, they're 24x7!

Why are we supposed to be bothered? Jobs? The internet generates *plenty* of jobs in this country. Expertise? I can count the number of times I've been given any genuine advice in a shop on the fingers of one hand...where do I find an endless supply of detailed, expert advise? The internet. Community spirit? I can see it's a nice idea, but then if the councils were worried about that then they'd stop building housing estate after housing estate without any extra amenities, wouldn't they? In fact, if the council were bothered about keeping the high streets, they could just slash rents, or stop charging altogether. They could provide adequate free parking, they could provide secure cycle storage, they could offer incentives to stores that stay open late.

The high street was built for a bygone era when people walked, when women didn't work and when people didn't have the luxury of choice. Its time is over, best just accept it and move on.

chewmylegoff

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

The high street will never be able to compete with a retailer that can locate in the middle of nowhere and that has to pay a fraction of the price for staff, space and rates.

the high street cannot compete on cost, and very often it is a probably getting the specific thing you want from the high street as they don't have a huge warehouse they can keep anything you might imagine in at a low price.

however, the reasons that i will continue to use the highstreet for many things are:

(i) you can try clothes on (admittedly you can try things on in a shop and then buy online but that is hassle)

(ii) you get the thing you want there and then (providing they have it in stock of course!!) and you don't have to deal with effing UK mail to get hold of it. some delivery services are fine, but UK mail are pathetically useless. they will only deliver on a weekday and will only deliver at an unspecified time between 9 and 5pm. often they don't actually come on the day specified at all, and on several occassions they have just stuck one of those calling cards through our letterbox without ever ringing the front bell, which i find perplexing.

amazon at least cuts through this problem as they just send it to you in the post and you can get it from the post office on saturday morning. no such luck with uk mail - their depot is in abergaveny or something idiotic like that.

basically if you could just get stuff in the post rather than having a courier deliver it, the internet would be fine.

Tippytoes

wellused wrote: »

The rest of the world will soon catch us up don't worry they always do!

If only. It seems this country is top of the league for the undesirable things in life (mentioning nothing in particular) and bottom when it comes to the good things.