SERVICE AND QUALITY CAN PROP UP BRICKS-AND-MORTAR STORES

I’M on the hunt for a dress to wear to a black-tie event.

I’ve traipsed through numerous shops. After two hours of shopping I can count on one finger the number of times a sales assistant took the time to ask if I needed help.

In light of this I wasn’t surprised to read this week that Topshop Australia has gone into voluntary administration.

It’s the latest in a long line of retailers – Marcs, David Lawrence, Pumpkin Patch, Herringbone, Rhodes and Beckett and Payless Shoes – to succumb to challenging market conditions.

I’m an avid shopper and even I’m losing faith in the Australian retail scene.

So here, free of charge, I’d like to share my insights with the retailing bosses because I reckon I know where things are going awry.

Competition from online retailers is fierce and if bricksand-mortar stores are to compete then they need to offer something online retailers cannot. Good old fashioned service.

By service I mean staff who know their brands and understand their customers.

Staff who take the time to acknowledge customers and ask if they need help!

If I were a mystery shopper I’d be giving many of the staff a zero, based on my recent experience.

Just one assistant greeted me and asked if I needed help. The rest either looked the other way, or continued talking with their colleagues.

Instead it was left to my 11year-old son to help zip up dresses and run out to collect other sizes. His future in retailing is bright.

This week I ordered four dresses online – all of them fully returnable and refundable. All of them arrived within days of ordering.

And that is why bricks and mortar stores are failing.

If what they’re offering isn’t superior to the online experience, then why bother?

Much has been written about the rise of fast fashion. Cheap, disposable clothes and homewares, sold for a discount price, but unlikely to survive one season.

I don’t know about you but I’d rather pay more and buy something made to last. But if I am going to pay more for quality I want a quality retail experience too.

So many things are focused on cheap-cheap but I reckon there’s a market for quality, service and not-so-cheap.

Just like $1/litre milk, maybe cheap clothes are unsustainable. Why else would a chain like Topshop be in financial trouble?

Are the clothes being sold so cheaply that the business model is unviable?

And are they only cheap because the designs have been ‘borrowed’ from high-end designers and made by underpaid, overworked people in foreign sweatshops?

These are the questions we should be asking ourselves as we browse crowded shelves of cheap clothes. Who has suffered for my fashion?

alice@gormanmedia.com.au