OPINION


April 2019 ertonline.co.uk Paul Laville l CEO, T21 Group


Merging the physical and the visual worlds


injected a welcome shot of optimism following the nuclear grenade that had been tossed into the crowd by Mark Pilkington, author of ‘Retail Therapy – Why The Retail Industry Is Broken And What Can Be Done To Fix It’. Ms Dickinson asked how many attendees viewed ‘the high street’ either as something undergoing inevitable evolution or a slow, tortuous death. Thankfully the former viewpoint prevailed, proving that even in the storm-face of uncertainty, consensus can be reached.


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Back here in a moment. But first... Many years ago I was a rep, and one of the ‘areas’ I covered was London’s Tottenham Court Road, which, since the mid-1970s, had been the go-to high street in the city for consumer electronics. By 2009, however, I was having conversations with business owners looking to relocate because rates and rents in ‘The Street’ had skyrocketed and the coffee shops and aspirational furniture stores of the future were moving in. Smartphone ownership and social media were booming and that, plus the lack of spending-money post-Credit Crunch, was changing the way people shopped. In simplistic terms it meant that shoppers could browse for the cheapest deal on their phones whilst sipping chai lattes at a wobbly upcycled table. It was the same pattern, repeating the world over. But change happens right? Nothing stays the


same. Howard Saycell, Retra CEO, lamented his lack of a crystal ball during his opening address at the Conference, but if there is one thing we could all have seen coming, it was the rise of internet shopping and the pendulum swing of ‘buying control’ towards the consumer. However, plenty retailers disregarded online shopping as unimportant, and they stuck to their bricks and mortar even as customer numbers dwindled. At the ERT Turning Point in February 2017,


retailers discussed how they could maximise their online proposition and it was clear that many would need to step it up, since quite a few by their own admission had only ventured online reluctantly and even then, in a minimalist way. Back to 2019 and Ms Dickinson underlines the


point, again, that we need to stop thinking ‘about stores vs online’. This is 10 years on from those ‘early warning’ signs I’d witnessed in The Street. I wish I’d had a crystal ball. I could have written the first ‘retail doom’ book and made a fortune! However, it’s one thing saying that you need


to bring online and physical experiences together – achieving it is another matter. What does this ‘seamless experience’ actually look like? And what will it look like next year? Is there a danger that by the time your seamless experience emerges, things will have moved on yet another step or two? Mark Pilkington suggested that retailers could


bring their online experience into their stores (for example) by literally handing the customer a tablet at the point of purchase so that the transaction could be completed instore but fulfilled via the website. I’m not sure if that’s the answer, because to me this further undermines your store. I can see the logic, but if you do that to me when I’m buying my next washing machine I will ask you what was the point of visiting your shop in the first place? I’ve worked with many independent retailers


over the years and with T21 I’ve conducted enough mystery shopping exercises using test shoppers of all ages and backgrounds right across the country to know that face-to-face selling has real value,


even in the digital age, even amongst young adults. Independent stores thrive on face-to-face customer interactions. They have a ‘personality’, a uniqueness to them, and they often stand for community values that shoppers will engage with. If stores ever lost that, then it really would be ‘Retail Armageddon’. And yet the online experience also matters. A lot. I think the answer is not about bringing the


online experience into stores, but extending the in-store experience online and merging them through the use of rich media content. Maybe there is something to be said for enriching your online presence with the heritage, the personality, culture and values embodied within your store, and sharing online the experiences that occur within its walls. Social media presents the ideal agent that could fuse the physical and the virtual together and I’d argue that the most successful businesses in retailing today are those which are evolving to do exactly that.


t the Retra Conference on 26 March, just a few days before Brexit didn’t happen, Helen Dickinson, CEO of the BRC,


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