With a top name from the high street seemingly going into administration every week you would be forgiven for worrying about the future of the British high street. Former bustling town centres will now have several empty premises, boarded up shops or a plethora of charity shops to try and plug the gaps. The fact is that less and less of us are venturing out to do our shopping and are sitting at home, tapping a few keys, and getting it delivered to our door.
There are stores appearing on business parks across the country that you probably have never even noticed. They have no advertising, no checkouts and most importantly no customers. They have been set up with one purpose only; to deal with our insatiable appetite for shopping online, one that Tesco recently opened in Crawley created 700 jobs, at a time when the high street is shedding jobs like the Spanish and Greeks.
While people bemoan the demise of the high street, they should think about a few things before blaming everyone and their cat for this fall in favour. The rents and overheads are crippling businesses who have bricks and mortar outlets, and if you have the choice of sitting in the house to do your shopping when it is thick of snow or pouring with rain or blowing a gale or venturing out, which would you choose?
Technology is also playing a big part in the deconstruction of the high street as we know it, coupled with the marked change in customer’s behaviour that has been noticed over the past few years. This includes a trend known as showrooming, where customers go around shops scanning items with their smartphones to see where they can get it cheaper. Over the Christmas period, more than 25% of prospective customers walked out of stores empty handed after showrooming.
The future for the high street, with a few exceptions such as fast food outlets, is pretty bleak. The older generation who have not been seduced by technology won’t be here for that much longer, and the younger generation coming through are highly unlikely to take their place when they are already used to shopping online.
When it comes to the question of what the high street can do to delay or even stop this inevitability is hard to answer. They cannot drop prices when rents and energy costs continue to rise, they cannot make people leave the warmth of their house to come to their stores in the winter. All they can really do is what most have done already; establish themselves with a strong online presence, and keep their fingers crossed.
