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OPINION
The future is looking bright S
o, lockdown is coming to an end. The shops are open, and that it’s possible to trade pretty adequately with fewer we may be off on holiday to somewhere sunny this summer, branches - fewer but better. if fortune smiles. But as we begin to look at some form of Two questions spring from this. If you have more than a single momentum being re-established, it’s hard not to wonder what the shop, does it make sense for this status quo to be maintained in past year has taught us, and whether there are positives as well as light of the changed conditions? Equally, if you do decide that negatives if you happen to be a retailer. operating on a multi-location basis still makes sense, have you The first thing that’s probably worth saying in this respect is that beaten a path to the door of your landlord/s to enquire politely if you’ve been relatively nimble, everything that can be found in your about the price asked for the properties rented to you? shop also happens to be available online. This may Of course, for those who own the freehold of sound like a blinding glimpse of the obvious if you’re the store from which they trade, this may be a less A while back, a large retailer (and more often than not, more is on pressing matter. But there’s also the vexed question many were offer via the web than in-store, other than in the largest of how you treat your suppliers and whether some predicting the branches), but it’s quite surprising how frequently kind of quid pro quo is involved: 60-day payment indie toy shops appear not to have been that bothered death of the high is pretty standard and 90 is not unheard of. Is it street. It may be about the web - pre-pandemic at least. worthwhile, if you manage to pull off the trick of diminished, but Yet it’s hardly been a struggle to work out that turning over your stock reasonably quickly, asking that doesn’t mean your suppliers what kind of discount will be given for if your shop has been closed and you have a transactional website (and yes, non-transactional retail we’re mourning its ‘prompt’ 30 days or less, payment? As things stand, sites do exist - think Primark) there’s a fighting chance if you can reduce the cost price, then the result passing. A that you might have been able to salvage something heads straight to the bottom line. Lazarus-like from the mess. Indeed, one of the lessons that the last The final point that we may have learned is revival seems year has absolutely banged home is that those retailers that people do actually like shopping. Wise heads likely, and those with halfway decent virtual shops have been able to predicted that while online shopping may have that have turn their physical stores into distribution centres. worked as a stopgap measure during lockdown, by managed to How many shops have you wandered past where the time the shackles were loosened we would, as survive the Covid a nation, be champing at the bit to head down to there’s been a table at the entrance with a (usually hand-written) sign bearing the message “This is a click predations will shops/pubs/eateries, even if the conditions in which emerge from all of we can do so are still somewhat different. and collect point”? The answer is a lot and, if nothing this stronger than else, it shows that if shoppers can’t get into a store, So let’s be positive! It’s been a long it can be turned into something else that serves the road to get to where we are, and there when they same purpose (albeit browsing has not been possible, would appear to be life in our shops went into it physically at least). yet. A while back, many were And what of the online merchants? What has been remarkable predicting the death of the high street. It over the lockdown period has been the way in which many have used may be diminished, but that doesn’t mean the hiatus to open bricks-and-mortar stores. The high street, it would we’re mourning its passing. A Lazarus-like appear, is attractive to some - even when thoroughfares such as revival seems likely, and those that have Oxford Street have looked like war zones, such has been the scale of managed to survive the Covid predations closures and consequent boarding up that has taken place. will emerge from all of this stronger than But do online retailers know something that the rest of us when they went into it. don’t? Perhaps. What is apparent is that although they’ve Also worth noting is the fact that, not been opening stores, they’ve been very picky about where to put too fine a point on it, at the start premises are located and have been able to strike deals as far of 2020 there was a lot of dead wood as the price of a lease is concerned. They’ve also ensured that around. That’s no longer the case and the they only have a few outposts. This makes sense, as one of the road ahead will be peopled by those with problems for multiples has been that they are, well, multiples. stores that are both viable and places that As a nation we have been overshopped and 2020 has shown shoppers will want to shop. All is not lost.
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John Ryan is Stores Editor of business magazine Retail Week. He has worked for the title for more than a decade covering store design, visual merchandising and what makes things sell in-store. In a previous life, he was a buyer. 17
...for the retailers who survived the past year, says John Ryan
