Monday February 4 2019 THE NATIONAL MOTORCYCLE MUSEUM, BIRMINGHAM
talking trade
On bellwethers and crystal balls Consultant Michael Weedonlooks to the future of high street retail
and closures was a bit worse last year than before but, on balance, the loss was less than one in 100 of the total. Not welcome, but not a catastrophic fall. The deeper story over the past five years is that big retailers have been getting rid of shops, net, while independents have opened more. The LDC (Local Data Company) vacancy rate has slipped from about one in seven shops in 2012 to roughly one in eight now. So, there’s a special offer on reviews as we head into the summer and it’s a BOGOF. The snappily titled MHCLG (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government) Committee wants your predictions for 2030, while retail veteran Bill Grimsey is preparing to release a sequel to his 2013 ‘The Grimsey Review’ of the high street: a riposte to the Government-commissioned Portas Review carried out by retail consultant Mary Portas in 2011.
Q
uestion: what will our high streets look like by 2030? The government wants to know. That’s not half
past eight this evening, by the way. The government is asking about the state of retail in 12 years’ time. And if you have the answer, then it wants to hear from you by June 22.
When big name retailers start closing shops,
newspapers reach for apocalyptic headlines - and a fresh government review is announced. Right now, House of Fraser is looking to close half of its UK stores and Marks & Spencer has announced that it is accelerating closures, preparing to shutter 100 shops. Retail commentators love nothing better
than a ‘bellwether’. On a farm, that’s the sheep wearing a bell that leads the flock. In the media, it’s a business that seems to characterise the direction of an industry. Hence, spot the bellwether and you will know where the flock is heading. The world is complicated. We need simple
stories to make sense of it. But this is where storytelling can let us down. Choose Marks & Spencer as the bellwether and the narrative is of a high street heading down the drain. Choose Primark and it’s onwards and upwards to a bright future. The actual story lies in the real numbers.
The churn on the high street is about one in 10 shops every year. The gap between openings
June 2018
Both will rely on statistics to tell their stories; see where the chart line is headed, like the bellwether, and you can predict what will happen next. This is what I call ‘forecasting with rulers’. See the line, take a ruler and continue the line into the future. Instant prediction. But life gets in the way. For example, online sales account for about one in six pounds that we spend, with half of that going to retailers that have both shops and ecommerce. But the growth rate of that market share has moderated from about 50% per year a decade ago to about 18% per year now. Oddly, retail lags way behind other sectors such as manufacturing when it comes to online commerce - yet the UK leads the world when it comes to internet shopping And underlying conditions change. Here’s another example: for a decade, rail travel has grown year-on-year, every year. On the back of these rising passenger numbers, retailers have clustered outlets in and around train stations. The huge extension to ThamesLink has just opened, Crossrail is preparing to take its first tickets and diggers are chewing up the countryside as HS2 gets underway. ‘Forecasting with rulers’ says the charts are heading upwards and will carry on doing so. But then life got in the way. Last year, rail passenger journeys dropped on InterCity routes, commuter lines and even the tube. A blip or a change of direction? Where is that sheep headed? Forecasters should also think about the population. Over the past decade, the UK’s people-count has risen by nearly 1% a year.
•
HousewaresLive.net
That’s about half a million extra shoppers every 12 months. Will that continue through Brexit, or dip or increase? Investments, as the adverts remind us, can go up as well as down. So too with statistics. Enquiring where the flock may be headed over a dozen years is close to asking an impossible question. Predictions only work as long as the bellwether plods steadily in the same direction for more than a decade. It seems likely that in 2030 there will be
more retailing going on than there is today, as long as the population continues to rise. The amount spent with retailers has increased every year since 2008. In 2030, will it be spent in shops and stores, on high streets or retail parks, in person or online? When we peer into our crystal balls, we need
crystal clear clarity on the questions that we’re asking of them. And I, for one, am not crystal clear that we are.
• Michael Weedon is managing director of exp2 Ltd, which carries out projects including research and report creation for clients in the retail industry, including data providers, place managers and individual retailers. He established epx2 in 2016 from a leading trade association role.
Michael’s contact details are: Mobile: 07411 763 551 Email:
Michael.weedon@exp2.co.uk Tw: @michaelweedon
•
twitter.com/Housewaresnews
housewareslive.net | 39
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40
