Jeremy Clark
Airport retail therapy Jeremy Clark attempts to make sense of airport shopping and asks “how do such outlets survive?”
There are quite a few things in this world that I simply don’t understand. Euro-zone fiscal policy, IKEA assembly instructions, reading
Japanese, camping holidays, my Tubeface account and people who choose Ryanair. These are all amongst things that totally baffle me, but also fairly high up on this list is Airport Retail Policy.
For the life of me I cannot understand how the shops that you find at airports survive or how this market is designed.
If you consider that a large percentage of the folks wandering around the terminal spent a disproportionate amount of time on-line searching for the cheapest possible deal, clicking option after option to secure a further £3 off a ticket price, then walk into this shopping mall and lay out £495 for a pair of socks? It doesn’t make sense.
Terminal 5 looks more like Rodeo Drive, with the possible exception of Dixons which, along with the booze and smokes vendors, does offer products cheaper than on the high street. The point is that all the other shops here don’t feature on most high streets. I live in a moderately affluent area in a leafy part of England, but even my town doesn’t have a Gucci, Cartier or Louis Vuitton nestled between Poundland and Oxfam. I do wonder if less frequent flyers go through some mental change once they are clutching their boarding passes, or maybe there’s something in those security scanner things that removes all sense of financial reality. All I know is that someone is buying from these places and they can’t all be First Class passengers.
But it’s actually annoying for those of us for whom the airport terminal is almost a second home and you actually need something. I was recently faced with having to get an extra shirt and some smalls whilst in transit.
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www.onboardhospitality.com
My options were Paul Smith, with nothing under £1000; Pink, Gucci, Salvatore Ferregano or Harrods. What I really needed was Marks & Spencer, T.K. Maxx or British Home Stores. I would have thought that airports serving LCCs, where 90% of the passengers have spent more on McBreakfast than they did on the ticket, and with retailers like Asda/ Walmart, Tesco and Primark could clean up. Here is an example of what I mean at Stansted (supposed to be London’s third airport but actually closer to Holland). Before you pass security there’s Accessorize (affordable bling), Monsoon (affordable clobber for girls), Coral (for a flutter on the gee-gees), Clair’s (more affordable bling), Clarks (functional shoes). Then as soon as you pass security there’s Hackett (Huntin’ Shootin’ and Fishin’ wear for the gentry), Hamleys (toys for spoilt brats), Mulberry (like Burberry only
with bags) Swarovski (Stansted’s answer to Cartier) and Ted Baker (pricey Jeans). I can only figure that all these retailers realise they don’t stand a chance before check-in and that everyone won the lottery as they passed through security. Food-wise it’s a similar story. Land-side its usually Burger King and Pizza Hut for the masses and M&S food for the Gymkhana set. Go airside and there you find Caviar House Oyster Bar (Fish ‘n’ Chips for the rich), Gordon Ramsey’s Plane Food (plain but not cheap) and Caviar House & Prunier Seafood Bar.
My thinking now is that as the airlines have trained us into such frugalness, they should run the retail operation and we can get Aquascutum and Burberry to run the airlines. Then we can all fly First Class! Email any comment to clarkjeremy@
hotmail.co.uk
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