I read with interest A Better Man‘s blog entitled ‘Have You Visited the Everything Store?’
Over here in the UK the ‘Everything’ store as well as rising business rates and rents are closing traditional high street stores by the dozen, as consumers choose cheaper online shopping and the convenience of not having to drive to a shopping centre, pay to park the car, and then walk to the store only to find it hasn’t got exactly what you want.
In Suffolk, the latest casualty of the Everything store is the large department store Beales, which has several branches and has been trading since 1881. Mothercare has recently shut its doors, and in the past we’ve lost Maplins, Thomas Cook, Freeman Hardy and Willis, Tandy, Dixons, Dewhurst, MFI, Jane Norman, C&A, Comet, JJB Sports, Barratts, Blockbuster, British Home Stores, Toys R Us, and F.W Woolworth. House of Fraser and Debenhams aren’t looking good either, and I only hope Marks & Spencer’s hold out, as that will be the final nail in the coffin.
Our high streets are filling up with coffee shops and mobile phone shops, both of which seem to do a roaring trade. However, if those are all that’s going to be left in our high streets in the future, then it’ll be a sad day for everyone. Sam and I went into our local branch of that well-known coffee shop recently and asked for 2 green teas, which came to nearly £5. I know I sound like my mother (who used to complain at the price of most things), but £5 for 2 cups of tea will ensure I’ll never cross their threshold again; I’d rather drink water and make a cup of tea when I get home!
It’s got to the point where every time I go to Bury St. Edmunds, our local town, I see another shop has closed, or that another cafe or coffee shop has opened. Huge out-of-town supermarkets have taken the place of all the little corner shops of my youth that provided more of a personal service, and so I wonder … what will be left of our high streets for the next generation? They’ll be able to sit with an overpriced coffee after buying their new phones, but what other shops will be available for them? None, I expect; but that’s okay, as they’ll all be buying stuff from the ‘Everything’ store.
Stevie Turner 
I prefer to shop online then walk to town. However, I also like the convenience of click and collect, deliver to store and easy store returns. Debenhams has now closed here as well along with Nasons, Mothercare, Woolworth.. I’m wondering who is next. Though I buy loads at Amazon, majority of my clothes are Debenhams. The future of our high street is very sad..
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It is sad, and I’m sure it’ll be reduced to just phone shops and coffee shops before long.
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You aren’t the only one noticing all of this. I think it’s frightening. It’s way too much of a digital world for me. I think this is becoming a global epidemic. 😦
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You’re right… the whole world is shopping online.
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And many seniors left behind 😦
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Unfortunately, yes. However, I don’t think they care too much about it. I suppose what they’ve never had, they never miss.
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No, but when stores keep closing and then they can only find what they need online, that will be a problem.
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Let’s hope they have children or grandchildren to ‘click and collect’ for them.
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No kidding!
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It’s epidemic. For a while at brick and mortar it was known as the Walmarting effect. Want a vacuum cleaner? Here’s what we sell, and we put the vacuum store out of business. Now, why would I drive to four stores in the hunt for a part or a bulb they won’t have, ask a question they can’t answer, or they invent some bs and try to sell it as fact when I can hit the everything store and have whatever on m6 porch in two days? It is shame, though. Aside- watched an old Perry Mason episode. There’s a new restaurant discussed, maybe visited. Della is excited to go, simply to find out what a whole dollar cup of coffee tastes like. So figure your fiver well spent. A buck in 1955 was the equivalent of 9.50 today. For one cup!
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I suppose it’s a case of use it or lose it as regards the high street, but I think the latter will apply eventually as online shopping is way too convenient.
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Over here the High Street (Downtown, Main Street) was replaced due to suburban sprawl with shopping malls. Hermetically sealed self contained shopping environments with the big name anchor stores and the distance between filled with boutiques and smaller franchises from cookies to jeans to doc martens. For the most part They are dying, dead or already bulldozed. To make room for condos with ground floor designer groceries and delis and coffee shops and a large Amazon locker. It is convenient. Going downtown to the big Macys or Dillard’s or Sears or Woolworths was an event. Thank god for angled parking so parents didn’t teach children all the words required to parallel park. Worse, I grew up in the city where the parking meter was first put in use so o had to cough up the meter change from my piggy bank stash. “Don’t worry, Philip, just feed the meter and you can get even with us at Woolworths.” The thing about a world of convenience and tapping glass to communicate is the dearth of stories…
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Oh, how sad. I can see that happening here also. Younger generations live on their phones and order everything online. Oldies are left traipsing around high streets looking for a shop that isn’t closed. Over the past year or so I have taken to ordering a few things online too. I guess I’m as bad as everyone else now, but as you say, it’s convenient. Many shops I could have bought stuff in are no longer there.
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Yes Beatles started in Bournemouth about 1890 – ours is their flagship store though you would not think it when you look at the shoddy condition of the outside. Our craft group has met for years in their top floor restaurant and that is very hit and miss with service! The council have just completed a nice pedestrianisation in that road and called it Beale Place – but £144,000 in business rates surely will contribute to the store closing.
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Yes, business rates are way too high these days, but the councils need all the money they can get. I don’t suppose there will be a reduction any time soon…
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With retail moving online, what about our communities? I know the local shopkeepers by name and they know me. We share snippets of our lives and I can ask for a favour, as I did this morning when I borrowed a pen. The connection and care that flows through all this. We can’t lose that surely? For those that live alone, this may be their only human contact.
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Our local shopkeepers have been taken over by the big supermarkets. The little corner shops that I remember as a child have all but gone.
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Yes, it is all chains now and Express stores. We know each other though. ❤
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I would think clothing-only stores would do okay. People need to try clothes on, both for look and fit. Returning clothes bought online is a real bother.
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Some of them are still trading, yes, but for the big ones, some of their branches have closed in our region.
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The honest truth, Stevie, is that the future of retail is on-line. It is cheaper and easier and fits the modern lifestyle and the fourth industrial revolution. The impact on jobs is going to be huge though. The future of jobs is quite scary, in my opinion, for people who are not academic with highly evolved and mobile though processes.
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Very true, Robbie. I suppose then if people are all shopping online, then they shouldn’t complain about the loss of high streets.
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