Insanity is, as Albert Einstein once said, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I’m not sure retail developers got the memo on this one though.
Earlier this month (21 June) Cushman & Wakefield announced that UK shopping centre investment turnover in the first half of 2013 was ‘very healthy’. In fact, at £1.928bn transacted, it is more than double the £808m from the same period last year. With 20 schemes under offer including the Mall in Sutton Coldfield and Mell Square in Solihull, demand for prime schemes now outweighs supply. The belief is clearly all that nasty credit crunch stuff is now a thing of the past and the great British public will soon be out spending with abandon once again.
If any encouragement is needed a new, better, bigger mall will always do the trick, or so the thinking seems to be.
I can’t help wondering if these developers get out much. The flaw in the keep-on-building-they’ll-keep-spending theory is for every one of these mega malls that opens, another, older one quietly closes. Meanwhile the High Street, which has always found it hard to compete anyway, thanks to draconian parking laws and ridiculous traffic systems, suffers the most. New shopping centre = same results, sooner or later.
As if any proof were needed, other industry data out this month, (20 June) showed the number of empty shops on Britain’s high streets has hit a record high. According to British Retail Consortium figures, almost one in eight shops is empty. That’s the highest figure since they began collecting the data in July 2011. I’m no Mystic Meg, but I’m prepared to predict this figure is only going one way. And, once again, it’s not just high street stores that suffer, its secondary malls too.
Yet, to the retail developers at least, the solution is to build more retail space. Just a bit better. It’s like some bizarre retail circus troupe, which stoically keeps on performing while the industry quietly dies around it. No one seems to be asking the obvious questions like; isn’t there enough space out there? Or, more specifically; why don’t we use the space we already have better?
In my trips around the UK I have come across one deserted shopping area after the other. Each one of them was probably the Next Big Thing once. And each one gradually gets surpassed. One of my most recent visits was to the near-deserted Peel Centre in Blackburn. It is a truly sobering sight to see what happens when the High Street property circus leaves town.
The truth is, as we all know, the way we shop has changed. Granted, we do like to shop in the comfort of ever larger and more shiny retail developments, where everything is well laid out with an ample supply of free parking (although a few improvements to what went before could have been equally as good). Online shopping is booming too, attracting many consumers to buy their goods at the click of a button and then use their weekend leisure time to socialise with friends or relatives, at venues well away from the High Street or malls. Meanwhile, snapping at the heels of Amazon (which still remains the most visited website for mobile retailers), the Google Glass revolution is growing apace with a whole new way of choosing our goods.
Instead of ignoring these developments and simply adding more and more units and doing the same thing over and over, it is time to try something different with our existing retail space. A great place to start would be the high street, which has been hardest hit for the longest. We should focus on our town centres as community hubs. It would be great if they could be a meeting place once again and to do that we need to offer something new (and I mean new) to consumers. Empty shops could be converted into education hubs, affordable homes, wellbeing centres and leisure quarters. The sky really is the limit.
All it needs is a little new thinking. We could, as an industry, show the public a new trick or two, put down some roots and make the best of what we’ve got.
Bill Grimsey is the former CEO of Wickes, Iceland, Focus DIY, and author of Sold Out; who really killed the High Street. Visit his website at www.vanishinghighstreet.com.
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