Town centres 'must adapt to online shopping'

[Steve]

See this current BBC story here: Town centres 'must adapt to online shopping'

What do you think about what they say?

Personally, I think it mostly tosh!

It contains lines like these...

Town centres will need to market themselves as convenient hubs for picking up products ordered online...

I can't think of a worst place to go and collect things than a town centre! How on earth do you lug whatever it is the mile to the car for a start!

They must fulfil the modern need for convenience and value of those with increasingly limited resources and incomes...

Town centres exist by not competing on price/value but by other means. They actually need quite high prices to cover shop rents and retail staff etc.

It is weird how the folks who should be taking advantage of all the empty shops with great new retail ideas seem to not be around anymore.

The owners of major UK retail chains seem to often now live abroad to save them paying the absurdly high levels of tax in the UK... I suppose they are just not about to see the empty stores and get great ideas for new retail projects to invest in.

If anyone has a few million to spare I have heaps of ideas for new retail businesses... Anyone else have any views I wonder?

Steve

[Mike]

Steve

The one thing that's for sure is everything keeps on changing and any business standing still and not adapting will struggle, I can't possibly see how a high street store can compete on price with an online setup operating from a low cost warehouse.

I think even online stores may suffer in the future as more people source products direct from places like China, India or Brazil.

The stores that I see suffering the most are those that don't actually hold any stock in store, where you have to order! The one big advantage of a high street store surely is that if you want something you can just go and pick it up without waiting also you can actually see the item pick it up and touch it all things that online stores cannot do, even with the greatest photography.

[Steve]

I can't possibly see how a high street store can compete on price with an online setup operating from a low cost warehouse.

The idea of business is to make money isn't it. I thought that story seemed to miss that point. Competing on price with the cheapest deals online is not what the high street is normally about.

I think even online stores may suffer in the future as more people source products direct from places like China, India or Brazil.

Perhaps, though at present the threat of hefty courier charges, silly tarrifs and taxes, and VAT being charged at the door and so on can kill off any enthusiasm for that... and sending back the 40KG BBQ with a dent in it to China is perhaps not going to work out well...

The stores that I see suffering the most are those that don't actually hold any stock in store, where you have to order! The one big advantage of a high street store surely is that if you want something you can just go and pick it up without waiting...

Hmm... not sure. I would never make most of my purchases on our local high streets. Carrying anything serious down the street just doesn't work for me....from a TV to a chair to a BBQ to you name it the High Street may not be the place for it. I don't think that matters.. they just need new ideas, new stores, and new thinking.

Sadly, the UK is being stripped of all its businesses by foreign firms... most things are now owned by outfits abroad aren't they, and often with the backing of their governments. Someone seems to have worked out that the really dumb policy we seem to have of allowing all of our profit producing businesses to be sold off makes us ripe for the picking.

The UK is generating less and less tax as the companies all move abroad... and soon there will just be ever increasing debt and no sources of money left unless we get some new thinking...

Steve