The High Street Needs To Offer More

8 June 2019

As Debenhams faces almost certain demise and Arcadia enters administration, rumours of the death of the quintessential UK High Street need to be heeded - more now than ever.

Even in these difficult pandemic times, a visiting alien couldn’t be blamed for querying whether entrepreneurs have suddenly become bereft of imagination and innovation, when it comes to rebooting the appeal of physical shopping on the High Street.

Fortunately, the proverbial cliche, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ comes into play - it seems almost too obvious to say that High Street outlets now need to prioritise Customer Experience (CX), as much as they prioritise their services, products and their bottom lines.

In this new lockdown-world of restriction, the ease of online shopping has proved a lifeline for so many people.

Even if we wanted to, we're no longer able to trek to overcrowded, often uninviting, boulevards of shops. Now, we're almost obligated to sit back in the comfort of our homes and tap our way to purchases via a keyboard.

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), internet sales as a percentage of total retail sales, rose from 20.1 percent in January 2020 to 28.1 percent in October 2020. While this chimes with an ongoing trend, the figures demonstrate a greatly accelerated push towards online trade, no doubt greatly attributable to Covid 19.

In comparison, the rate of internet sales, according to the ONS, saw over twenty percent of retails sales in November 2018, up from fifteen percent at November 2014.

However, I don't believe these latest figures are reason to be defeatist or unimaginative.

As many new entrepreneurs propound the value of being disruptive through new business models, it sadly remains the fact that a majority of our well established retail chiefs remain too cautious; reluctant to abandon legacy customer-engagement practises, despite resounding evidence that such intrenched business approaches no longer work!

ONS data states that over 750 High Street clothing retailers across England and Wales have disappeared since 2013. In contrast, around a thousand new hair and beauty salons have been introduced to high streets across these countries – it is no coincidence that these new business ventures offer customers a personal experience.

If legacy business leaders, especially retailers, are willing to ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ (referencing Susan Jeffers), they have an astounding opportunity to restructure the concept of high street shopping.

Entering a clothing shop, shoe shop or tech shop, isn’t just about picking up an item from a rail or shelf and making a payment.

It needs to be about entering an environment that delivers almost individually bespoke messages and stories; information that ethically exploits customers’ senses: visually, or through smell, or through touch; through welcomed audio experiences; through thoughtful mindfulness experiences, etc., … such great potential seems almost endless, and certainly isn’t restricted to retail.

In the particularly difficult restaurant arena - which has been so severely impacted by the CoronaVirus - it still remains true that a wonderful proliferation of so many different cuisines is now ubiquitous along so many high streets. Once governments and administrations clearly define consistent rules-for-trade for these outlets, the opportunity to combine the enjoyment of eating with wider personal experiences (ie. home catering, individual recipe creations, etc.) could have entrepreneurs in this sector stirring with joy.

Sadly, even the most experienced of business leaders have found themselves behind the curve in understanding the need to prioritise customer experience.

So, what accounts for this apparent lack of imagination; where are the innovators?!

I’m an optimist – at least in this area of physical retail experience - and believe there are enough Bravehearts out there, primed and ready, preparing to emerge and reclaim success through physical High Street shopping innovative strategies.

I do proffer both a warning and advice, however, to those old names that have formed the shopping-history-stories of our lives over the years thus far; stories we have loved in the past and they believe we are now loathed to see end.

Now is the time to change or potentially die.

Arcadia Group and its retail components have evidently sat behind the curve regarding contemporary customer requirements, experience and satisfaction, even before the advent of Covid.

But the chasm from here-to-there doesn’t require too great a leap.

The view from here-to-there shouldn’t be seen as so very disconcerting.

And, hanging on to what one knows, simply because embracing something new seems too much of a commitment to the relatively unknown, will only result in being relegated to a raft, without the proverbial paddle, on the way down a fast flowing creek full of something quite unpleasant.

Ingrid Smith is a senior content strategist, storyteller & mentor