Panic over ... I know how to save the high street
‘Like a medieval monk, M&S grew fat and complacent’
My most abiding memory of early childhood is of weekly visits to the Army & Navy coffee shop, where I would have a glass of milk and my mother would have a coffee and a simple lesson in the exigencies of modern capitalism. (“How much? But I could buy a whole jar of Nescafé for less than that!”)
This would be followed by a trip to Allders to strain the mental health of more shop assistants and point incredulously at more price tags, until it was time to go and contemplate new knickers in Marks & Spencer and everything else in John Lewis.
Allders and Army & Navy are long defunct, and with the announcement from M&S that it is closing a hundred outlets to try to halt the haemorrhaging of profits, and the news that not only are John Lewis’s profits negligible so far this year, but also that it has been pipped at the post in customer satisfaction rankings by Amazon, I have to fear for the remaining retail bastions that dominated my early consumer landscape, too.
The high street is being gutted, and all the usual suspects are to blame – competition from online shopping, rising bricks-and-mortar rents and rates, falling consumer confidence as we wait to see what exactly Brexit means by Brexit, and whether Trump will take us to war by accident or by design – to which can be added more individual pressures.
John Lewis has affected its profits by recent heavy investment, and to be beaten by Amazon in customer satisfaction rankings, especially by the nugatory amount of 0.2 per cent, as it was, is not as apocalyptic as it sounds.
If the question is “Did my thing turn up quickly and in a serviceable state?”, any website dedicated to only that is going to do well. (If the question is “Did my thing turn up quickly, in a serviceable state and keep Margery and Joan in the employ of a partnership that will let them sit down during their hot flushes?”, the answer will probably be very different.)
Many partial solutions have been suggested for averting – or at least arresting – the traditional-retail apocalypse.
Reduce those rates and rents. Increase – or impose for, ludicrously, the first time – online tax liabilities. Decrease parking restrictions… or go the other way and pedestrianise the place, so children are safe from cars and people can wander about, restoring serendipitous purchasing to their lives, at least until they trip over the goddamn children running around.
Within shops, retailers often need to up their own games. I grew up in the Eighties, when M&S had, to all intents and purposes, attained the status of religion. The St Michael trademark merely reinforced an understanding that it was a secular church for a portion of society that also claimed The Archers as its liturgy, Cliff Richard as its high priest and Good Housekeeping as its bible.
Like a medieval monk, it grew fat and complacent as it reaped the benefit of what seemed like eternal verities – the need for a coat that would last from first job to retirement, cardigans that would go with anything – that were supplanted by new influences, changing demographics and the growing unwillingness of fortysomethings to dress like their grandmothers. They ran off to Topshop, Zara and Primark, and M&S has done virtually nothing since to tempt them to return.
Poor service, as well as misunderstood markets, remains endemic in British retail. Perhaps it smacks too much of our feudal past. Who knows? But that, too, needs to change.
Above all, the notion of what the high street can realistically, sustainably, be nowadays needs to change. Online shopping offers too much in the way of convenience (and cheapness, for as long as it remains effectively subsidised by the taxpayer) to be beaten.
But retailers could band together and rent showrooms for their goods. People are more likely to buy things they have checked for quality and tried on for size, even if the increased bill is produced online.
And the need for meeting spaces – for work, for fun, for rest, relaxation and charging our phones, for not going stir crazy as a freelance trapped in your non-air-conditioned home, say – grows. Children need places to play and create now that we can no longer send them safely out into the fields and tell them not to come home till teatime. And they will all need to be fed by cafés and restaurants of every stripe.
The high street needs to move away from the simple selling of goods and move into services.
Personally, I harbour a vision of a stack of dormitory pods on every corner, so that when I find myself with an hour to kill, I can use it to have a nap. We have access to enough cotton jumpers, underwear and sturdy household goods. Sleep, space and safety are our deficits now. The spoils will go to those who supply them first.