How Retailers and Brands Can Revive the High Street Together

It’s easy to forget that the UK’s High Streets were in crisis long before Covid-19.

Even before months of enforced closures and office worker exile, e-commerce, out-of-town competition, sky-high rents and unaffordable business rates were causing the slow death of many town and city centres. 

Is this the end?

There are reasons to think not. 

Over the last few months, there have been tentative signs of traditionally out-of-town retailers casting their eyes back towards the centres.

• Garden centre chain Dobbies is offering convenience stores selling “gardening essentials for city centre residents”
• After years of estate shrinkage, Majestic has rebranded and opened a number of in-town branches focused on enhanced customer experience
• Even IKEA is planning to open a mini-store in Hammersmith’s Kings Mall next year

It may be premature to call these steps the first green shoots of a high street renaissance. 

There is surely a lot of economic carnage still to come in the coming Covid/Brexit winter and beyond and many more casualties on the way. 

Moreover, e-commerce has made gains and improvements that are surely irreversible. 

Hundreds of thousands who were hesitant to shop online have embraced its convenience, comprehensive choice and price-competitiveness since March. 

And of course, the Zoom revolution will almost certainly lead many service industry employers to never reoccupy their office buildings - either at all, or in the numbers that sustained much of the daytime retail and hospitality economy. 

So why be hopeful?

There are clear signs that people miss the pre-2020 shopping experience.

And having that trip into town - which they may, in previous years, have foregone for a more convenient drive to the out-of-town retail park or an Amazon binge - taken away from them has perhaps made many appreciate what they’re now missing all the more. 

According to The Guardian there will be 18,000 retail outlets vacant by the end of the year, now including Debenhams and the Arcadia brands. Of course, this takes a terrible human toll. 

The high street has been ripe for reinvention for a number of years, but now is the time when the costs of inertia are at their highest. Not as a like-for-like competitor for e-commerce and out-of-town retail - that ship has sailed - but as something different and complementary. 

We can’t turn back the clock. But we can look forwards. 

As Jeff Bezos himself famously said: 

The net is pretty cool, but the physical world is the best medium ever.

What the high street can do - and sometimes does brilliantly - is deliver a rich, holistic customer experience. 

So brands and other stakeholders need to collaborate to work out NOT “what should we sell?” but rather “what do people want to DO and FEEL?”

Why go to the high street when everything available there is online?

Well:

#1 Everything isn’t available online

Hairdressers, tattooists, physiotherapists and other personal services can’t be accessed online. Local micro-businesses, cafes and play centres for children can’t be accessed online. Art galleries, libraries and other public amenities can’t be accessed online. 

Identikit high streets of the same chain stores and discount stores play into the dominance of e-commerce and out-of-town by minimising what could be distinctive about the centre and generate a sense of unique “placehood”. 

#2 It’s a way to spend a day

For many people, shopping is an experience in itself that is more than just consumption and exercising choice. 

They browse. They try on clothes. They get some expert advice from a shop assistant on what suits them and what does not. They have a coffee. They see some friends and chat in the street. They browse a bit more. They take a walk through the park and watch some street performers. 

It’s a leisure activity in itself as much as an economic exercise. This social, human element is what I think so many of us are missing right now. 

#3 It can foster community

It’s only a small minority of JG Ballard fanatics who find a sense of community and belonging at the Gateshead Metro Centre, in Bluewater, or in the Trafford Centre. 

But many people feel a genuine pride in their towns and cities and what they could be, given the chance. 

Combined with the convenience high streets offer to urban residents (many of whom don’t have the cars that make out-of-town so appealing), this sentiment offers a foundation for economic revival to build on. 

There’s also the matter of social interaction which shopping provides - which has a very important impact on mental health. Enforced isolation has made 2020 a very difficult year for many people, and we are likely to feel the consequences of that more and more as winter progresses. 

Next steps?

High street retailers must stop fighting the tide. Like it or not, brands exist in an omnichannel environment. Town centres can play a distinctive part in that ecosystem. 

And there are big gains to be had from successfully integrating online and offline channels. 

The latest ROI Genome report from Analytic Partners, “Omnichannel and a Brave New World”, shows that online and offline advertising drive one another. 

Business that embrace omnichannel marketing see returns 32% higher than those that do not.

To take advantage of this trend, brands need to:

• Represent themselves consistently - providing the same high quality experience in-store and online
• Use the possibilities of mobile and hyper-local targeting to give passers-by reasons to come into stores and browse
• Focus on the value-adds that only a high street store can provide: pleasant ambience, expert staff, opportunities to try and to touch the products etc
• Embrace civic initiatives and activities, to connect their values with local impact

But I fear that in their current state, brands working alone may not be able to pull this off. 

There is an urgent need to reform business rates, which can only come from central government. 

Without changes here (and without breaking large retail units into smaller, cheaper spaces) it will remain prohibitively expensive to do business in many centres. 

Brands must also work constructively with local authorities. It’s in their mutual interests to turn boarded-up, depressed high streets around. The infrastructure that surrounds shops - in terms of pedestrian areas, green spaces, parking, amenities etc - is all part of the high street experience.

Perhaps most importantly, brands need to work together. 

Initiatives like the new #Saveshops campaign are a good start. This initiative aims to promote online the facilities and value-adds of local stores while people continue to avoid the high streets. 

Proactive brand collaborations - such as those we’ve seen between Asda and The Entertainer, Sosander, John Lewis and Next, and Dobbies (again) and Sainsburys - are all aimed at enhancing in-store experiences. What these initiatives have in common is that they share and combine the brand power of specialist retailers and the reach of the generalists. 

Covid-19 has provided a reckoning for the old high street. 

Shops that lack a reason to exist will cease to exist. 

There’s no going back, but there is a way forwards - and I think we’re beginning to see what the future could look like.