Store Bores – where’s the creativity on the high street?

 

A girlie gang would book the day off college and wonder in awe at the size and excitement of Oxford Circus. Now, I don’t bother to trek into London when shopping in Bromley, Croydon and Bluewater offers the same bland boring mix of stylised commercial fashion that has been produced by the big retail players. 

 

Having worked in buying for three high street retailers I know how it works. Central design produce key trends these key trends are then replicated, refined, tweaked (call it what you will) for the individual designers that work in situ for the brand. They normally sit and work close to the senior buyers so creativity can spark. Is it therefore any surprise that there are claims of the UK becoming a boring homogenous place to shop?

 

 

And it’s not all about the traditional clothing retailers either. Look at the phenomenal growth of traditional non-food retailers that are now flexing their bat wing upper arm flabby muscles! Just look at George at Asda the Cherokee range at Tesco the whole clothing market is becoming more and more down market with mass buying to provide those ever important buying economies of scale. What about the little players…what about the fashion designers that are our true source of creativity that can’t even get a foothold on the retail property markets?

 

 

Recently the Army and Navy store in Bromley has been replaced by Primark and is allegedly reporting excellent trading figures.

 

 

 

 

Primark MPs have recently been informed that four out of ten small stores could be wiped out within the next twenty years creating “Ghost Town Britain”. When the big players such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s Asda and Morrisons hit a high street its shutters up and time please for the speciality stores. Leaders of the 50, 0000 convenience community stores said that they are closing at a rate of 2,000 a year. Research has indicated that if a third of shoppers desert the High Street in favour of an out-of town supermarket the local high street becomes unviable and will close down quickly.

 

 

Tesco, the current darling of the high street with the city, certainly aren’t the flavour of the month with the small retailers. Their expansion has involved the £530m purchase of more than 800 small shops. Tesco then spent a further £53.7m on 45 stores trading in Europa, Harts and Cullens in the London area alone. Then Tesco also have their local stores too such as its Express and Metro squeezing out the small independents yet again.

 

 

So perhaps it’s time to reconsider our own individual buying habits too. How impressive is the current boycott of the Women’s Institute of giant supermarkets in favour of the small independents!

 

 

WI chief Nan Collier will be calling on members of the long established association to debate a motion at their national conference in June which could lead to all 250,000 members boycotting out-of-town supermarkets. Delegates representing 4,500 members in Cornwall have already voted in favour of the ban. Simon Bishop, Federation of Small Businesses said “We are delighted that the WI is taking this initiative. Small businesses need all the support they can get to redress the imbalance between local shops and the supermarkets which control 80%”.

 

So yet again it’s the big boys putting on pressure onto the small independents. So what am I leading up to…… the closure of the LFF boutique at Bluewater? Click here for further details. https://www.fashioncapital.co.uk/content/view/5192/27/