It has been a bad week for the UK’s high streets. Arcadia, owner of brands such as Topshop and Burtons, has fallen into administration. Debenhams has suffered its final collapse and will be put out its misery in January having used the Christmas period to sell through as much stock as possible. All 120+ department stores will close. Between the two companies 25,000 jobs are at risk. 25,000 households face a pretty bleak Christmas.
In Caernarfon, where our shop is, we’ve already lost KFC,
Holland & Barrett, Poundstretcher, and almost certainly Argos, this year.
With the group that owns Peacocks and Edinburgh Woollen Mill teetering on the
edge as well, there may be more pain to come. For Bangor the loss of Debenhams
will be a huge blow to a high street already scared by endless empty units.
All of this is grim news. The pandemic is accelerating
trends that have been decimating high streets for years now. Online shopping,
unreformed business rates and poor management were already a pretty toxic brew
for High Street retailers to confront, covid is merely applying the final nail
in the coffin to retailers who have been in and out of administration for years
in some cases.
Does this really matter? Isn’t it a good thing that people
can shop from the comfort of their own sofa’s for everything they want? Surely
low prices and maximum convenience is a win for the consumer. If that means some
lumbering, unresponsive retail dinosaurs from the pre-digital age have to be
read their last rites, well, so be it.
That view is short sighted at best. If we start with just
the jobs aspect of the equation, 25,000 more unemployed people is a real blow
at a time when the economy is struggling anyway and those job losses will fall
disproportionately on women as well, further adding to the gender imbalances in
employment statistics. On top of that much of our money spent online goes to companies
not based in the UK who pay little tax here. Yes, warehouse distribution jobs
are created by online sales but not in the quantity required to offset the high
street losses.
But beyond the painful statistics, the decreased tax take
and the families missing out on Christmas presents this year, there is a wider reason
to care about the fate of our High Streets. The vibrancy, attractiveness and
well being of our towns depend on them. If you’re fortunate enough to own your
own home, the value of that can be dependent on them too.
When we were deciding where to open our shop, we spent a lot
of time choosing the right location. When we looked at Bangor we saw the
largest conurbation in the area that had a university population full of more
environmentally aware younger shoppers. We also saw a high street already hollowing
out with a large number of national retailers still to lose. In addition to
that Bangor has large shop units, marketed by national letting agents ideally
suited to those big multiple players. However, they are too big and too
expensive for independents to get started in. We couldn’t see how Bangor could bounce
back quickly from the trends sweeping through high street retail even before
Covid struck.
In contrast, Caernarfon had lost a lot of its national
chains, although a few remained. Put brutally, much of the pain had already occurred
and the town had a healthy sector of small independent retailers with small
shop units ideally sized and priced for others to follow suit. To us, the choice
was obvious. So far, time is proving us right.
But the challenge is huge. There are no white knights riding
to the rescue of our high streets. No big retailers desperate to open large
chains of stores across the UK. Our high streets, the places we walk and work
every day, are only going to recover from the onslaught of cyclical change and
coronna virus if we, the local people who live in towns and cities up and down
the land, have the courage and imagination to bring them back to life. Sustainable
high streets are only possible if independent retailers, owned by local people,
responding to the needs of their families, friends and customers, take up the
challenge of opening shops and fighting to make them viable.
In that sense Caernarfon has a head start on what the future
has to look like. The correct size shops, a strong tourist trade anchored by a World
Heritage Site, and a network of established independent shops who will welcome
newcomers with open arms if our experience is anything to go by. That recipe is
repeatable elsewhere, maybe with a slightly different mix of those vital
ingredients, but still hewing to the basics of local people taking responsibility
and ownership of the places they live.
The idea of no big chains coming to rescue our battered high
streets can be scary, but it is also a massive opportunity once the worst of
the pandemic passes. We have it in our power, through the pound in our pockets,
to start creating the town centres of the future. You can start this Christmas
by shopping as locally as possible and challenging yourself to by locally
produced presents for family and friends. There’s loads of great stuff out
there, it’s really not that hard. The most difficult part is making that conscious
choice to get off the sofa and make a difference.
And in the new year, as spring arrives and the world slowly recovers,
well then it’s time for people to step forward full of amazing ideas that make
the best of their skills and find ways to open small shops and bring our towns
back to life.
As our example shows,
it is possible, just expect to work plenty of overtime…
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