HIGH STREET CONTINUED CHALLENGES

A report out this morning on the BBC suggests 10 of the 12 government funded ‘Portas Pilot’ towns have seen a fall in the number of occuplied shops.

The continued growth of online retail means traditional high streets need to adapt thier offering, choice and customer experiences inorder to challenge. Clearly any change will take some time and there is no overnight fix. Fresh thinking, developing new experiences, reasons to go into our town centres and product offering could be the key to stimulate change.

Todays article on EN for Business provides more detail..

The rise in popularity of internet shopping could result in up to 22 per cent of high street stores closing down within the next five years, new research has suggested.

This, according to the Centre for Retail Research (CRR), is equivalent to 62,000 shops shutting down. The report predicted job losses of around 316,000 as a result of store closures.

And it said that online retail sales will continue to rise, with the proportion of shopping done via the web set to reach 21.5 per cent in 2018, up from 12.7 per cent in 2012.

The report claimed the UK is “facing crisis” and said that retailing and retailers will have to make clear strategic decisions that allow online retail to co-exist with other retail channels.

If this does not happen, then “multiple retailers will disappear or be so mortally wounded that a large minority of business categories become dominated by purely online retailers”, it stated.

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