A retail trade paper’s recent report proclaimed to a breathless, hushed and expectant world that stores (remember when they were shops?) are on the skids. Seems the online route is growing so fast that sales originating from your computer/iPad/mobile will soon overtake those made on the high street, which will then become increasingly superfluous, except as a saddo’s click ‘n collect outlet. Cue tumbleweed in Oxford Street.
Then there’s the parking dilemma. Local authorities, scrambling to meet budget constraints without axing services, are raising inner city parking charges up and down the land, thus repelling Gordon Brown’s fave socio-economic group – hard working families.
Business rates? Store groups from Land’s End to John O’ Thingy are pre-groaning about an expected average 5.6% uplift in April – for no noticeable improvement in services.
And, bless my soul, what about energy prices? Shop around as much as you like, and ignoring the recent derisory few percent ‘give-back’, prices are outrageous, say a leading pub chain, a clothing multiple and one of the big four grocers.
Minimum wage, new Euro rules, shop lifting on the rise in line with joblessness and homelessness, the wrong weather, melting ice caps, robot uprisings (Japan, just before Xmas in case you missed it), will there always be a Belgium, not to mention as yet unspecified gloom –the list just goes on and on.
And yet, like a shining light in a naughty world, along comes (in April, when the doomsters say the lights will be going out) good old Richmond’s Retail Forum at nice, comfy, convenient Whittlebury Park, stuffed with top retail names like Asda, B&Q, Comet, Greggs, Homebase & Jessops, and that’s only the top half of the alphabet, and rudely ignores the likes of Matalan, Mothercare, New Look, O2, Wilkinsons and Waitrose.
And no one forces them to come! They want to hear some top notch speakers, they want to know what’s the newest techno-marvel coming down the pike, they want to natter to each other. AND THEY AREN’T GLOOMY, OR DEPRESSED, OR GIVING UP, BLESS THEM!