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FSP View: Will F&B Remain the Great Retail Saviour? |
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Posted At: 22 February 2017 14:20 PM
Related Categories: Retail, Retailers, Town & Shopping Centre Management |
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Here at FSP, whilst on balance being highly positive about the future for F&B in retail environments, we are cautious about some of the signals that it’s impossible to ignore.
Just looking back at December 2016 for a moment the positive contribution made by the ‘experience’ sector at that time of year is clear. Visa, through their IHS Markit report, reported a 2.6% LFL increase in consumer spending overall but +7.3% in hotels, restaurants and bars and +6.4% in recreation and culture. By comparison clothing and footwear was down -0.7% and household goods -1.1% on a like for like basis. January’17 seems to have got off to a good start with the same group citing hotels, restaurants and bars up 6%. Some interesting numbers also came out of Deloitte in their Leisure Consumer Update in which they highlight increased spending in cafes, bars and restaurants amongst 18-34s from Q3>Q4 2016 compared to 35-54s and 55+. So far so good – there is little doubt that F&B has provided huge opportunities for retail property owners throughout the last 5 years (and probably since the start of the recession) to inject life and vibrancy into shopping centres/parks and outlet malls, evidenced by the realisable rents in this sector.
On the potential downside we all know that there is far more retail space than actually required in the UK and there are concerns that over-supply in the F&B sector might be storing up similar problems: sales density dilution, declining profitability and potential closures. This is particularly the case in the London market but where the metropolis leads other large cities and towns follow. A phenomenon of retailing generally accepted is that product life brand cycles are shortening with the need for constant innovation crucial to the maintenance of shopper interest. Our view is that this is particularly the case in F&B where new brands, menu variations and service techniques continue to proliferate. Staying with a concept too long can lead to problems; for example The Restaurant Group (TRG) reported a drop of 5.9% in Q4 2016 LFL sales plus the closure of 37 restaurants (though in the same period 24 had opened) as well as putting a further 23 sites up for sale and the need for ‘substantial price and proposition changes’. TRG is clearly reacting positively to make the necessary changes but this approach came too late for Ed’s Easy Diner which went into administration in October 2016 and Red Hot World Buffet in June 2016. On the positive side the latter managed to continue trading and Giraffe Concepts took over 33 Ed’s Diners. Quoting the National Living Wage and potential price increases as a result of weakness in sterling many large F&B groups have sounded the warning bells for 2017 though the extent to which these will be realised is, as yet, unclear. Although inflationary pressures are mounting the feed-through into shop prices is yet to manifest itself. Early days perhaps but the BRC Nielsen Shop Price Index for January’17 v ’16 shows non-food prices dropping -2.3%, no doubt due to high seasonal markdowns after a relatively poor trading season but contributing to a continuation of that all-important consumer confidence mentioned earlier.
FSP has recently placed more resource behind its own F&B services with the recruitment of a specialist consultant – Harri Jaaskelainen – and the development of a comprehensive set of new tools to evaluate F&B trading potential and solutions in any retail environment. The trend for increase in ‘Fast Casual’ dining (think Tortilla, Itsu, Nando’s, Tapas Revolution) where seat turn is faster than standard Casual Dining and ATV higher than Fast Food is coming through clearly in analysis of shopper trends when comparing the scale of existing sales versus potential. What is increasingly evident is the need for a careful evaluation of the trading opportunity and identification of F&B gaps based on the shopper profile, demographic content and competitivity of each individual location rather than a simple assumption that piling in more F&B is the universal panacea.
To find out more about FSP’s F&B approach please call Harri on 01494 474740 or email Harri@fspretail.com
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Retail Update - September 2014 |
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Posted At: 18 September 2014 15:00 PM
Related Categories: Retail, Retail Statistics, Town & Shopping Centre Management |
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One high-profile administration has been recorded on SnapShop since our last update –Phones 4U. Having lost a key contract with EE, soon after losing one with Vodafone, and despite being a profitable business, with turnover of £1bn and underlying profits of £105m in 2013, Phones 4U says without the contracts from the phone networks it can no longer operate. All 550 stores have closed.
The ongoing debate surrounding the future of Great Britain’s high streets has taken a new turn, with a group of property experts within the Government’s Future High Streets Forum looking to pilot a town centre collective ownership scheme among landlords. The aim is to tackle the issue of fragmented ownership on the high street, which had made it difficult to implement a single cohesive strategy to improve town centres and has been highlighted as a barrier. The parties are attempting to raise around £50,000 to pilot the different ideas in two to three UK town centres, such as a London suburb, a northern town centre and a small market town.
Britain's shop vacancy rate has fallen to its lowest level since June 2010 according to Local Data Company figures, which reveal that the shop vacancy rate in August fell to 13.3%, down from 13.4% in July. This is in contrast to the leisure industry which has seen its vacancy rate increase by 0.05% to 7.7% during the month.
Shopping centre investment volumes are on track to surpass the record levels seen in 2013. Figures from CBRE show that some £3.1bn of shopping centres has been sold so far this year, comfortably exceeding the £2.7bn transacted during Q1-Q3 2013. With a further £700,000 of malls currently under offer, Q1-Q3 2014 looks set to far exceed the transaction volumes witnessed in the same period last year and moves closer to the £4.2bn transacted in 2013.
Online sales of non-food products recorded their fastest growth rate in August since the BRC-KPMG Online Retail Sales Monitor started in December 2012, growing at 19.8% when compared to August 2013. Research from Mintel backs this trend up, predicting that the UK online fashion market is expected to be worth £10bn this year. E-commerce is seeing a strong growth in sales as consumers prefer to shop on line - 17% of online spending is on clothing and footwear, up from 13% in 2011.
Interesting research from Savills reveals that new international fashion entrants have accounted for nearly half of all openings in London to date this year. Savills reports there have been 12 new international retail entrants in the London market so far this year, with a further 11 due to open by the end of the year.
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What to do in Brent Cross |
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Posted At: 14 May 2012 15:19 PM
Related Categories: Retailers, Social Commentary, Town & Shopping Centre Management |
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I might do a little bit of flag waving when the England team plays, and maybe a little bit of jumping up and down (at least metaphorically, if not physically) when the England team score a goal, but beyond that my interest in football is negligible on any scale. From this uneducated perspective, I am aware of two types in football; those that support Manchester United and those that don’t. However, whatever the type, fashionista is not a term universally applied to football supporters. Football strip is slippery, primary coloured and in the most part, unflattering. Quite frankly it looks good only on, well, athletic premiership footballers. And even then only when there really is nothing else to wear.
Arsenal supporters, who, by definition, are not Manchester United supporters, are presumably an untapped market of loose-walleted beings completely oblivious to the sartorial inelegance of the red and white kit. The club knows its market and is eager to please, relieving its fan-base of a little more cash in the process. In case you missed it, Arsenal Football Club has announced it is to open its first flagship store in a major retail location after securing a 2,270 sq ft first floor unit at Brent Cross Shopping Centre.
According to Retail Week, the shop has been benchmarked against sports brands to produce trendy merchandise. In red and white presumably? Narrows the market a little!
However, Brent Cross is, according to the Arsenal press statement, located in a traditional heartland of Arsenal support. Phew! Fortunately, Brent Cross has a substantial amount more to offer those who prefer their trendy merchandise in a delicate shade of blue or green.
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Growing Old Gracefully |
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Posted At: 12 March 2012 17:28 PM
Related Categories: Future of Retailing, Retailers, Town & Shopping Centre Management |
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Age. Sometimes having lots of it is good – think cheese, whiskey, doctors (no one wants a young doctor), and sometimes its bad – old cars, for example, are quite unreliable.
When it comes to retailing, I guess the jury is still out on whether age really matters; take Woolworths, 100 years of experience couldn’t save them. People were fond of them, sure, most of us had grown up stealing pick n mix from the local Woolies*, but fondness doesn’t pay the bills.
On the flip side there’s ASOS, just ten years old and turning over £165m. And catering to the most fickle market of them all; youth.
So, is it a big deal? Probably not to most. Knowing that Forfars has been baking since the 1500’s isn’t going to influence me when purchasing a pasty, and I won’t be going to D&A over Specsavers purely based on their ‘oldest opticians’ boasts, but it does provide some comfort to see ‘old faithfuls’ when visiting an unknown town or city.
I sometimes wonder if, in ten years’ time, there will be any grandma and grandad retailers left on the high street at all. As companies get taken over, department stores get purchased and renamed, and others simply fail to move with the times only to disappear, more of the old gets pushed out and more of the new comes stomping its big noisy neon feet in.
Life is moving quickly and trends have become fads – is the key to the future keeping things fresh and new, or will our inability to incubate brand loyalty encourage the manufacture of poor quality, throwaway products? And will we become ‘less British’?!
These things have to be considered. They should be considered. When you dismiss M&S as too ‘fuddy duddy’ and nip on over to Superdry, are you destroying English heritage or are you creating new?
I’m not sure, but I don’t see many retailers striving gain for loyalty; it seems like ‘sell, sell, sell’ to me, and to hell with longevity. Keeping things new and interesting isn’t bad, not at all, but it would be a shame to keep loosing traditions, bit by bit.
What do you think…? Comment below.
*Not me, of course, other miscreants
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Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the Titanic |
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Posted At: 10 July 2009 16:12 PM
Related Categories: Finance & Investment Management, Future of Retailing, Retail Property, Retailers, Town & Shopping Centre Management |
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A quick Google for the term “Save Our Shops” throws up 220,000,000 results in 0.29 seconds. The top results come in from The Evening Standard – championing the capitals independent shops; BBC iPlayer – re-running Mary Portas’ “Save Our Shops” series; and, interestingly, the Portsmouth Today newspaper site – which is covering the issue locally. These are just the top of the pile, for the list of people championing British retail in a vain attempt to rejuvenate the high street is seemingly endless. But why did it come to this?
We all know there is a recession going on – whether it is affecting us or not – but the problems were there before they were compounded by the current financial crisis. The rise of the clone town was being rebelled against; rents were increasing and people were aborting in-town shopping efforts in favour of the easier out of town retail park experience; all issues closely intertwined and ones that we are now facing the consequences of. And so the golden era of “build it and they will come” is well and truly over. If only the planners had listened sooner…
It’s not really fair to blame developers though. Developers, after all, respond to economic indicators which are essentially fuelled by our actions.
An element of greed is at play on both parts, but we should take some responsibility instead of blaming all and sundry.
It wasn’t just the banks – of Iceland, America or the UK - or Labour, Gordon Brown or Tony Blair – that got greedy, it was everyone.
Our celebrity obsession began to influence the decisions and aspirations we made and had; we became a consumer culture, punching well above our weight, and it was unfortunate that there was no ‘Big Brother’ around to say no when we asked for “more sir”. We got given credit that we couldn’t repay; we bought things that we couldn’t afford; and we artificially inflated the growth of the economy to breaking point. Quite literally. So, as an investor, a bank, a developer, why wouldn’t you take advantage? If the statistics are telling you to build, you build, and as our gold plated wallets got larger, so did the developments. Some may say that regeneration and development proposals became so large that town centres could no longer accommodate them, so they were sent elsewhere…somewhere ‘out-of-town’ (sure, it was all political). The clue is in the name. At the end of the day. it’s vain to argue that the capacity is there to support two healthy shopping destinations in one place. In most case, it wasn’t, and the survival of the fittest came into play.
At present, 65% of comparison goods shopping is done in town centres, 45% elsewhere; in 10 years time, it is expected these figures will do a flip turn. Basically, some town centres will die. Will we be upset? For a while…but people don’t like town centres – why would they? They’re not practical, and they’re full of people who hate shopping, so what will we be losing? A sense of community? Not really – when was the last time you went shopping and everybody knew your name? Its sad, but its industrial evolution, and at present, it doesn’t look like it can be avoided.
But, we can try. There are some cool initiatives in place – some councils and regeneration schemes, for example, are planning to buy up empty shops and letting them at a reduced price; resident-owned shops are springing up in an effort to revitalise ‘community spirit’; and entrepreneurs like Red or Dead footwear founders Wayne and Geraldine Hemingway are thinking up new, cheaper ways to bring retailers back to town centres, with things like their rent-free pop-up shops.
All is not lost, but a long hard look at the future is most certainly needed; jumping up and down screaming “save our shops” is not enough. Bandwagons are all very well and good, until the wheels fall off...
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Get place and wealth, if possible, with grace; If not, by any means get wealth and place. |
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Posted At: 07 May 2009 15:18 PM
Related Categories: Town & Shopping Centre Management |
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Since opening last October, Westfield Groups' 43 acre London shopping centre of the same name has been surrounded by controversy. The heavily promoted Luxury Village opened half full, the décor was labelled ‘cold and artificial’ and the first shoplifter was arrested – just 3 hours after its opening. But nothing has been more prevalent in the news than the bickering between the Australian landlord and its retailers over, you guessed it, service charges.
Westfield controversially raised the charge from a ‘reasonable’ average of £8.50 a square ft to £14 shortly after opening...putting the charge on the 10,000 sq ft Sports World store, for example, at £140,000! It seems a lot to me, even for a prime location like White City, so what, exactly, does the charge cover?
According to servicechargecode.co.uk, a service charge is made up of charges for services which are “beneficial and relevant to the needs of the property, its owner, its occupiers and their customers”. Such charges could include “the provision of heating, lighting, cleaning, security, maintenance and repair works and the replacement of fabrics etc beyond economical repair”.
...eh? This is where I show my true colours as a private residential tenant and down-right ignoramus when it comes to commercial property practices; I thought that’s what you paid your rent for!? Silly me.
In response to the complaints of its many, many tenants, charges have finally been dropped, and though Westfield Group insist that it's normal practice to adjust charges after a few months of testing trading, I suspect this statement from MD of the centre, Michael Gutman, is more about making excuses than telling the truth; “We’re starting to get to the point now at Westfield [London], with six months under our belt, of understanding the trading patterns of the building and getting a much more precise view of what the service costs should be”.
Mmm...yeah, and you’re also sick of hearing retailers bitch and moan about it, and are slowly realising that your footfall figures aren’t quite as recession-proof as you’d first hoped!
Ho hum, whatever the reason for the reduction in rates, I’m sure its already struggling tenants are happy, and hoping this will help to stop them joining the raft of other retailers that have already closed in the centre - You'th, Kate Kuba, Principles and Blooming Marvellous, anyone? Fingers crossed!
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Financial Health Warning |
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Posted At: 30 January 2009 11:13 AM
Related Categories: Retailers, Town & Shopping Centre Management |
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The consultants at FSP have been looking at the financial health of retailers and I thought I'd share with you their view of retailing At Risk.
Analysis by retail business consultants FSP shows that the financial accounts of 40% of multiple retailers, with a combined total of almost 13,000 stores, are Very Worrying. By linking these store locations, FSP has produced the first geographical assessment of the impact of At Risk retailers on towns and shopping centres. While the analysis identifies some regional and size related drivers, locally more complex factors are at play.
Companies have been identified as Very Worrying by applying the DIUS Wealth Creation Efficiency Ratio to the financial accounts of over 600 multiple retailers. All the recent failures of multiple retailers, bar one, had previously been classified as Very Worrying. The Very Worrying category includes all companies whose Value Added (sales less cost of bought-in goods and services) is less than the cost of staff and depreciation. With basic operating costs not being covered, these retailers are At Risk without continuing investment.
See the full press release, including Town Centres most At Risk here.
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Santa Clause Is Coming To Town |
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Posted At: 15 December 2008 16:11 PM
Related Categories: General, Retail Suppliers, Town & Shopping Centre Management |
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I for one remember my favourite shop Santa….he (and I do understand that it probably was not the same ‘he’ every year) was based at a local garden centre in Oxfordshire where I grew up. We would visit every December and inevitably encouraged my parents to buy more decorations and other Christmas related paraphernalia; presumable exactly what the garden centre wanted to happen. But does the jolly fellow boost sales? And are kids even still interested? If they’re not, they soon will be…
As we walk ever on into the future so does Santa. New concepts such as the Big Daddy ‘fly on the wall’ expose from Propinvest (Father Christmas and his gang will be broadcasting real-time to 6 of their Shopping Centres) and Santa’s Showtime (a 15 minute show put on by Meadowhall shopping Centre in Sheffield designed to expel ‘the long queues and disgruntled customer’) are dragging St Nic into the future, and you can also fit him into your increasingly busy lives (savvy teched-up parents can create their own personalised video message from Santa! I know one 4 year old who insisted her message was played back to her over and over again, now that is value for money as it is a completely free service.)
Good ideas, and theres nothing wrong with Santa going 21st C. PC, however, Santa is not! One shopping centre in Birmingham is outright refusing to have a Santa’s grotto for fear of offending Non Christians (a spokeswoman said: "We wish to be sensitive to people of other religions over the festive period. There are a lot of people in the region who are not Christians and do not celebrate Christmas") and in another centre, a skinny St Nick is refusing to stuff his suit with a cushion as he believes this encourages child obesity. He claims tubby children make his knees hurt! Maybe he needs some more meat on those knobbly sparrows knees?!
All of this is very interesting but does having him in your centre really boost sales?
There is the argument that actually no, he doesn’t, as no one in their right mind would take their children shopping in December! If parents take the kids to see the big FC, then perhaps they don’t intend to shop at the same time, but surely most people would not walk away from the shops empty handed during the festive period???
Shopper numbers are continuing to rise in the week before the penultimate last minute rush, and latest figures from retail analysts SPSL show that for week 10-16 December, shopper numbers increased 6.4 per cent on the week prior. We should also consider that on-line purchasing is on the increase; online year-on-year sales jumped 14% to £320m on Monday December 8 - traditionally the busiest day of the year online.
So although we might not be stepping out to shop as much as we did last year, there is definitely some attraction to the shops, and the SnapShop team like to think that good old Father Christmas has done his bit to get the shoppers flocking!
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Xmas Dex |
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Posted At: 01 December 2008 15:28 PM
Related Categories: Town & Shopping Centre Management |
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Councils are rubbish aren’t they? I know quite a few people who work for my local council (names and area both withheld, of course), and they are some of the nicest, smartest people I’ve ever met, so why – God why – are councils (as a collective) so boring, and how can they get it so incredibly wrong some times?
Last week, it was reported that Westminster City Council have asked Debenhams to stop playing Christmas carols to people outside their store; and this week, I found out that Chesterfield Council have spend £20,000 of Government funding – meant to tackle unemployment – on new Christmas lights!
It’s like that children’s rhyme, There Was A Little Girl; when they were good they were very good indeed, but when they were bad they were horrid. Only less ‘horrid’, more ‘stupid’.
And where is the balance!?
On the one hand, you have Debenhams, who are, at their own expense (although not altruistically) trying to inject some Christmas cheer onto the streets, only to have a poncy London council pour water all over their fire. And on the other, you have a council so completely overtaken with Christmas spirit that they’d rather buy £20k’s worth of sparkly [“oooh look at the pretty”] lights than get the scroungers/unemployed off their streets!
Why is Christmas so difficult to get right!? I think its simple, see…
RE: decorations and their consistent ugliness; observe the following rules and you can’t go wrong…
1. No neon
2. No tinsel
3. No fake trees (take note Northampton) or snow
4. What looked ‘modern’ in 1985 no longer looks as such
5. Make sure all the bulbs work
6. And that they are not formed in the shape of the baby Jesus, or other such religious tosh, that may or may not offend followers of other beliefs
As for budgetary limitations…
Maybe we should all combine this new ‘lets recycle everything’ attitude with Christmas and give our streets a modern, tramp-chic look this year?
Paper chains made from cereal boxes, glitter made with crushed up old glass bottles, papier-mâché trees constructed from magazines and coat hangers! Stick an energy saving bulb inside one of those big 4 pint milk cartons, string a few together and you’ve got yourself some 21st century fairy lights! Magical. All that would be needed to complete the scene would be Boris Johnson, atop a giant dynamo bike, peddling his little argyle socks off trying to keep the streets lit in a truly eco-friendly way. All through December. None stop. With no shower breaks.
...now isn’t that a much prettier picture!
Seen any ugly Christmas decorations in your shopping areas this year? Let us know, leave a comment below!
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Westfield London: Shopping Heaven or Hell of a Centre? |
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Posted At: 07 November 2008 15:00 PM
Related Categories: Retail, Retail Property, Town & Shopping Centre Management |
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Well, I jumped on this bandwagon and visited the new Westfield development in London, along with all the other curious people with notepad in hand, rather than wallet!
What can I say? It’s big! But then that’s no surprise as we already knew we were betting the largest in-town shopping and leisure destination in Europe.
The food court area was very much the centre of scheme and was very busy when I arrived at 2pm – possibly all those people updating their notepads, rather than weary shoppers taking a break! Certainly very few of them had any bags.
Sadly, much of The Village is not yet open and Louis Vuitton, the one they have been harping on about for ages, will not open its doors until March 2009! Also, rather curiously, the House of Fraser department store is at the end of village and unless you come from Shepherds Bush station you could easily miss it.
The size of the centre is daunting and there’s probably some psychological theory which states that after a certain point, the success of the centre is in inverse proportion to its size (the retail consultants at FSP can probably get their heads round this better than I), but with the retailers clustered in merchandise groups e.g. jewellery all together, your shopping trip can perhaps be accomplished without having to trawl the whole 1.6m ft2 of it to find what you want!
Along with a load of retailers you probably never heard of – which, like Golden Point and Yamamay, are already featured on SnapShop – there are the old favourites, like Clintons, Beauty Base and Superdrug. Curiously, the location of these established retailers, which seem to be geared to the less well healed visitor, is an area which they have cleverly made to feel like the old part of the centre as if it was already there (weird)!
My verdict is that Westfield London is well worth a visit. Its big, there are some interesting new retailers and some favourites that have upped their game. However the lack of retailers open in the village was a disappointment and the frankly run of the mill department store offer means Selfridges won't be shutting up shop any time soon!
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Driving Us Crazy |
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Posted At: 15 July 2008 10:22 AM
Related Categories: Retail, Retail Property, Town & Shopping Centre Management |
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In the same way that more rats have been “spotted” since fortnightly bin collections were introduced, trips to out of town shopping centres are allegedly declining since petrol prices started rocketing. It’s always much more newsworthy to hang your story on something that’s already making headlines.
Yes, petrol (and, even more so, diesel) is increasing in price at a disturbingly fast rate and yes, Jo Bloggs may well be giving serious consideration to whether her journey is necessary, but is this really impacting on out of town retail centres? Isn’t it more to do with the fact that we have less time to ourselves and better ways to use it? Being time-poor is a much surer way of focussing our minds to get what we need in the most economical way, than actually being cash-poor.
A more substantive point is that the FootFall figures over a number of years have shown no correlation with retail sales; so why are we getting so excited about a drop in pedestrian flow? And is the drop of any major proportions, or just one in an ocean? Despite John Lewis recording a decline in weekly sales figures at out of town stores, House of Fraser has reported sales in regional centres were up more than the rest of their estate. Selective reporting of this information has focussed the attention on only one side of the story.
It should also be noted that commentators refer to “out of town” retailing but all the evidence is drawn from regional shopping centres. Most out-of-town retailing is in relatively local retail parks. These are not generally covered by Experian et al. Referring to regional shopping centres as out-of-town is merely muddying the water and adding to confusion.
It seems highly dubious to be stating that people are abandoning their cars anyway – the school run is certainly still alive and well! According to the RAC’s annual report on motoring (2008)*, stress and fuel prices are not yet pushing motorists off the road. Nine in 10 motorists say Britain remains a car dependent society (92%). Over half (51%) expect gridlock in the next 20 years, while 73% of motorists say they would find it very difficult to adjust their current lifestyles to being without a car. Astonishingly, one in 10 drivers admit they now never walk anywhere!
So don’t abandon your plans to expand your store portfolio in out of town centres just yet! FSP can help you see the light in this gloomy tunnel.
* http://files.the-group.net/library/aviva/client_upload/File/RAC_Report_on_Motoring_2008.pdf
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Pedlars in your town centre |
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Posted At: 06 June 2008 14:15 PM
Related Categories: General, Town & Shopping Centre Management |
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I understand a bill is being placed before the commons to regulate the use of the Pedlars Act 1871.
Pedlars, these days, tend to stand in one place for an extended period to sell their goods or services, whereas the act defines them as “a person who, without any horse or other beast, travels and trades on foot from town to town carrying to sell or exposing for sale any goods, wares or merchandise or procuring orders for the same, or selling or offering for sale his skill and handicraft”.
These people, having morphed the original definition to protect themselves, therefore escape the clutches of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982, which allows local authorities to designate streets for the purpose of street trading. Believe it or not, street trading is different from peddling and therefore regulation of pedlars is exempted from those provisions.
Brian Iddon (Labour, Bolton South East), championing the bill, states that “19th-century legislation can no longer cope with changes in the way that goods are marketed and sold today”. Too right! Unfortunately for him, Chris Chope MP (Conservative Christchurch) intends to attempt to 'talk the Bill out' in order to frustrate the legislation. Talking the bill out must be even more antiquated than the Pedlars Act. Mr Chope believes that "Pedlars are hard-working, entrepreneurial, market-driven, self-employed and law-abiding traders who provide services much appreciated by the public at competitive prices.” A similar set of adjectives could be applied to MPs of course.
In looking into this a little further, I came across an Americanism for such antics – filibuster. Neat.
Mr Chope, please do not filibuster, allow the bill’s assent and let those legally operating in town and city centres get on with their jobs unencumbered by “pedlars”.
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Liverpool ONE |
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Posted At: 04 June 2008 14:12 PM
Related Categories: Town & Shopping Centre Management |
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Liverpool ONE is now open, and it’s scary! I’ve read that as a private development, the owners, Grosvenor, have the right to deny access to any undesirables, reported as “Big Issue sellers, beggars, people with Netto carrier bags, and young people skateboarding or hanging out with friends”. According to the Liverpool ONE website, their stores are ultra-hip fashion brands and cool independent boutiques. Presumably people with Netto carrier bags don’t fit this profile and won’t make it through the unseen doors of this mall without walls.
Perhaps all areas, residential, retail or business, should be privately owned and policed to keep undesirables out? This might have a positive impact on antisocial behaviour, then we could all rest peacefully in our beds at night, with the only worry to wrinkle our brow being whether we’re as ultra-hip as the Joneses.
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Born to shop or bored of shopping? |
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Posted At: 14 May 2008 10:32 AM
Related Categories: Retail, Town & Shopping Centre Management |
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How much longer will people travel to shopping centres when:
a) one shopping centre is interchangeable with the next
b) we can buy everything we need on the net
c) fuel costs a fortune?
Why indeed do we shop? With leisure time at a premium, why do we drive long distances to join hordes of others milling around a shopping centre, to buy something we don’t need, to replace the previous thing we didn’t need, which will now go to landfill, along with the plastic bag in which we carried home the new version?
There is no denying that most people get an adrenaline surge from spending money and treating themselves to something new, but do we need to spend so much time doing it?
The relationship between a loyal customer and a favourite clothes shop is intimate. After all, your clothes are your next of skin. Maybe as in all intimate relationships what we crave is a degree of familiarity to make us comfortable and relaxed –fruit and veg at the front of the supermarket and menswear tucked away upstairs – with a degree of surprise to excite and delight us. Familiarity alone breeds contempt as M&S discovered before Sir Stuart introduced the unfamiliar in the shape of Per Una and Limited Editions.
So by the same token, shopping centres also need to be simultaneously familiar and intriguing. Then we will feel both at home and a twist of excitement.
If a shopping centre doesn’t provide an experience we want to repeat, it will end up living only with those hardened credit bashers who are seriously born to shop. The rest of us, bored by its familiarity will seek our thrills elsewhere or satisfy our needs more efficiently online.
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