THE REBOOT

Looking back it was obvious really. Ridiculous rents and rates marching onwards and upwards meant eventually something had to give. For years our high streets were kept teetering on the edge, terrified of change and too poor to try anything new. Switching off the global economy in 2020 resolved all that overnight. Yes folks, the retail reboot is here.

When it comes to predicting what’s next for our town and city centres the general consensus seems to be that everything will shift online apart from the edge of town space-age supermarket, manned by robot shelf stackers and illuminated by Minority Report style hologram-ads. But rest assured, this is the vision of the techno-nerd, and techno-nerds are experts in misunderstanding humanity. Their vision of the future won’t happen for one simple reason: we don’t want it.

But we have changed. Lockdown, has taught us a lot. We probably bake a bit more, or read more than we did previously. We’ve learnt how easy it is to buy online and have it delivered the next morning. Posing with our feet next to a parcel for a doorstep snap has become part of our daily routine. But lockdown has also taught us what we secretly knew all along: that shopping was never just about buying stuff, it was about getting out and having fun.

What’s more, now that we’re armed with that magical little black slab of glass, (that smart device that carries the sum of all human knowledge with us wherever we go) our expectations are primed for take off faster and higher than Elon Musk’s Space X. We have access to everything now, we compare notes too, and cannot be suckered by your seductive advertising like we were a mere decade ago. Today we’re connected, we live at the centre of the universe with our eyes wide open, and we’re crying out “whatever you’ve got for us, it better be good!”

The world has changed too. There’s no doubt that 2021 is the year retail sheds its skin. It’s also the year we draw a line under the ever-rising rents and rates that thwart fresh blood from flowing through the arteries of our towns and cities. Call it the Great Reset if you like.

But while we’ve been stuck at home watching Netflix, the cleverest brands have been plotting and planning new and exciting ways to tell us their story, entertain us, inspire us and put us at the centre of their universe. They know that the online world alone can never do that. And they know that they cannot simply reopen their stores the way they were in 2019. They’ve learnt a lot too and very soon they will gather up all their online knowledge and data and drag it into the real world to create truly immersive brand experiences that know exactly who we are.

So, in our cities the rich multinationals, (the brands that sell us the stuff we want but don’t need) will build spaces, places and pop-ups that make a mockery of that little word retail to encompass events, exhibitions, social spaces, work places, leisure hybrids and workshops to provide us with an ever changing array of branded entertainment. The old model (product in the window, stock on shelves and out the back) will make way for engaging spaces that immerse us in a brand’s story. Their job will be to get into our brains and our bloodstreams, not to sell in the conventional sense as they won’t care where or how you finally get hold of their precious wares.

We’ve already witnessed this from global behemoths Apple, Samsung and Nike who have created ‘stores’ that are part town square (Apple, Chicago & San Francisco) stores that are more of an events venue (Samsung, New York & London) or stores that are ever-changing exhibitions (Nike House of Innovation, New York & Paris).

These are the places where technology can really enjoy itself. Stores will be aware of your arrival, know how many milliseconds you paused over their new product on social media, know your tastes in fashion, music and how often you exercise in order to direct you to things that can be tailored especially for you: limited edition, numbered, tracked and even insured… all you have to do is swipe your thumb. Here, the online and offline worlds will meld seamlessly, with you at the epicentre.

More flexible leasing will finally allow brands to show off and have a bit of fun without signing up for ten years at a time. So our shopping centres will become venues for product launches, branded experiences and pop-up exhibitions like the Samsung Experience in London and the Adidas Originals exhibition in Seoul, shown here. The empty boxes left by our dearly departed stores will open up a thousand opportunities. Some will be converted to digital interactive leisure concepts such as Toca Social’s football based games (opening at the O2 this summer) or e-racing concepts from brands such as Zwift (zwift.com). These brands will kickstart a retail revolution tentatively entitled ‘competitive socialising’. Other big box spaces will become health and beauty hubs offering fitness and yoga sessions, lunchtime botox, teeth whitening and de-stress injections.

By contrast, much of the future will also be about reinventing the best of the past. Back in our towns and suburbs you may have already noticed that the age of the independent is returning. Your local butcher, baker (and candlestick maker) have been given an electrifying lease of life, heralding a decade of young innovators and entrepreneurs desperate to revitalise our communities now that rents are set to be somewhat more sensible. They’ll open funky new bars, delis, health food stores and restaurants on more flexible terms, which in turn will make for a more dynamic local retail scene. Our luckiest towns might even see their moribund concrete shopping centre replaced by a glazed market hall, brimful of fresh produce and eateries, not unlike the Victorian ones we demolished in the sixties.

So don’t listen to the techno-nerds. The stage has been cleared and new players are waiting eagerly in the wings. The audience has greater expectations than ever before and, oh boy, we’re determined to get out and enjoy ourselves. We want to experience things we’ve never even thought of. We want to see pop-ups and wacky brand collaborations. We want to hang out in big, breathtaking dining halls and cosy, artisan coffee shops and delis. We want our fast fashion chains to host start-ups and our favourite national brands to promote young talent in their branded incubators. We want to go to concerts, exhibitions, product launches and festivals of music, food and culture, and we want to join local clubs and go to workshops in the evening.

Above all, we want to live again. It’s obvious really.

This article was commissioned by my good friends (and loyal client) Aptos.

  Howard Saunders   May 06, 2021   Apple, Food, Future, Retail, San Francisco, shopping, smartphone, technology, Uncategorized   Comments Off on THE REBOOT   Read More

DEVO

For the best part of three decades the high street has been in a quandary. It didn’t know quite what it was, what it was for, nor what it wanted. Local stores dressed up like branded chains, while branded chain-stores disguised themselves as locals. Little mom and pop newsagents brandished oversized fascias emblazoned with multi national brands so huge they could be read at ease from low flying aircraft, while national chains lovingly placed the town’s name on their fascias, just in case you forgot where you live. Big brands tried to look small and local, while genuinely local stores employed slick designers to dress them up like prototypes poised for global domination.

Some multi-national brands tried to import the flavour of their flagships into the regions by shoehorning the best bits into tiny provincial shoeboxes that were once perfectly respectable local stores with proper shelves and a bell on the door. Our high streets were having an almighty identity crisis…when boom! Covid19 swept in and changed everything.

Literally overnight, everyone could be heard singing the praises of their local heroes: the little stores that kept the lifeblood of the town pumping through its narrow streets. A silent revolution so welcome in some quarters that they declare they saw it coming, that is was inevitable, that something had to change.

The crisis has resurrected the idea of proper service too. Our local heroes stood behind their big, wooden counters and fetched us the things we needed like we were in a Two Ronnies sketch. What’s more, we were happy to wait politely as a sign of our newfound respect for their role in the community. It was as if thousands of high streets, up and down the country, slipped back in time a century or so. Boxes of the things in greatest demand were piled high near the entrance for tap and goers in a hurry and there was no need for a planogram from head office. Staff thanked customers more loudly and with earnest eye contact. Some even grew long beards and wore aprons as if to get into character for their part in this crazy sci-fi movie we call 2020.

Would you believe it? We’re actually enjoying the rebirth of community spirit and relish the new civility the crisis ushered in. Smiles are often broader and more genuine behind the masks than they were without them. Reconnecting with our hometowns has created its own momentum. We hunt down local produce and get excited placing special orders for things at the baker and butcher as if it’s Christmas! We even brag about our love of seasonal produce and joke about our abstinence from imported, blister-packed avocados.

So, do you remember what it was like pre lockdown? Rich, clever brands were developing ways to encourage us to buy things we didn’t need by feeding us little tasters on social media and measuring how many microseconds we’d dwell on their shiny bait. This information was then fed into a giant computer so that they could helicopter in the most ‘liked’ products to the places that most ‘liked’ them. Supermarket chains were developing software to transport us virtually to the birthplace of every product on their shelves. Interspersed with ads, of course. In the tidal wave of consumerism up to the end of last year, this sounded rather exciting. Post Covid it feels irritating and insignificant.

We now know that the tipping point came in March 2020. The shockwaves from switching off the global economy have yet to be fully felt but it’s pretty clear we’ve now embarked on DEVO: A process of de-evolution of our high streets, of brands, the way we trade, and the way we think about retail. The intense heat of business has been burned off: the ridiculous rents, rising rates and the relentless rush for sales to pay them have slammed us hard into a brick wall. The over managed, over designed, over excited retail model that ultimately grew to bore us to death has run its course. How many three storey, back illuminated shoe walls can you see before you crave the simplicity of a pair in a simple cardboard box? How many interactive video screen towers do we install before they become invisible and meaningless? Even the glitziest flagships will switch to Devo mode. I dare say a few video walls are already being dismantled to make way for more reassuring communication like quality of manufacture, or simply creating the breathing space for proper one-to-one service. Simplification is back big time. Even the bizarre and baroque supply chains that over-evolved to bring us the stuff we didn’t need anyway, have strangled themselves lifeless.

Spectacle in retail will not die, of course. Gyrating Gen Alpha Tik-Tokkers will get the spaces they deserve, but big brand boardrooms will no longer echo to the demands for that ever elusive wow factor. Wows were so pre-Covid. We were heading here anyway, the coronavirus just hurried us along. Retail will mature very quickly in the coming months because our values have changed so dramatically. Smart retailers are sure to join us.

The advent of 5G was supposed to be the gateway to an instantly personalised future, so that even the mightiest of megastores would know our name, our cat’s name, and all our personal preferences. But in the post Covid climate who actually wants this sort of fake buddy-ism from the corporate world?

If we work together on this, DEVO can take us back to a gentler, more considered future with a stronger sense of moral purpose. So let’s not get too depressed as we watch our legacy brands in free-fall. They are clearing the way for fresh, young, agile entrepreneurs that will remind us just how beautifully simple retail should be.

Please join me on Twitter @retailfuturist for rants and wry observations

  Howard Saunders   Jul 15, 2020   Future, Retail, shopping, technology   Comments Off on DEVO   Read More

It’s 2019. We still don’t know what to have for breakfast

We’ve been lied to and lied to. Ever since we were told to ‘Dig for Victory’ back in 1941 governments have grown addicted to telling us how and what to eat in order to stay healthy. Often they were wrong. Sometimes, very wrong. Not that they were strategically malicious, you understand. Like all professional liars governments make stuff up, for often very good reasons…but once evidence emerges to deflate their well meaning hunches, instead of coming clean they double down or wriggle duplicitously so that the edges of truth become blurred and impossible to make out.

Fat is the obvious example. Scientists originally promoted low fat diets back in the fifties, along with the concept of controlling calories for cardiovascular health. Post war optimism ultimately embraced the low fat, high carb lifestyle. After all, we watched as the fat solidified after our morning fry up, and we certainly didn’t want that clogging up our arteries! So, in the sixties we switched to Cornflakes (along with a cup of sugar).

It turns out this was the worst advice given since the days of blood letting. Today, Cardiovascular Disease is the number one killer, responsible for a third of all premature deaths. A third ffs! But did we get an apology for the untold slaughter of a million innocent butter-dodgers?

New evidence contradicts everything the World Health Organisation still evangelises. Namely, saturated fats directly enable us to absorb essential minerals and vitamins, build cell membranes, and raise levels of good cholesterol…at the same time as disarming the bad. Bread and dripping anyone?

Just as the medical institutions enthusiastically leapt on the fat bandwagon, so they jumped on the cholesterol one too. Latest evidence suggests bad cholesterol may not be that wicked after all, despite Statins being one of the world’s most widely prescribed drugs ever. Bandwagons build tremendous momentum when they get going, and rather than change direction they simply get outpaced by a newer one.

A case in point is the anti-meat bandwagon, which is currently gathering speed at one hell of a rate. Only a few years ago, vegans and vegetarians were a rare and endangered species notable mainly for their nose-rings and knitted socks. Today by contrast, even the reddest-blooded meat enthusiast will boast of the joys of flexitarianism. Shamed by a vitriolic climate of health-freakery, carnivores must now be wary of offending their friends and colleagues. They nibble their pork pies furtively inside the wrapper and sensitively lower their voices when recounting tales of the weekend barbecue. 

But actual evidence proving red meat causes cancer, which we hear on an almost daily basis, is very dubious indeed (the worst offender is very well done, or over-roasted meat…much like the risk of burnt toast) The WHO’s website sprinkles its meat warnings with a generous handful of mights and maybes, but then the press get hold of it and distil a thousand words into another bite-sized, blood-curdling headline. I can’t help but think this is driven primarily by environmental concerns, and our own health, rather than the planet’s, is their way of scaring us into abstention. (These are the things that keep me up at night)

Before the virtue signallers among you grin too broadly above your enormous plate of under-cooked kale, it’s worth pointing out that every silver lining is wrapped in a miserable, grey cloud. In short, iron in vegetables is nowhere near as absorbable as the iron in red meat. Rates of anaemia among vegans is rising, along with other delightfully named conditions such as Leaky Gut and Fatty Liver Disease. And we haven’t got time to get into the whole side effects of phytoestrogens thing, but trust me, it’s pretty scary. And believe it or not, just like everything else, you can have too many vegetables in your diet. A big plateful of fibre takes so much digesting that it can cause a deficiency in essential proteins and fats. Suck on that, smug potato.

If you don’t believe me, read this personal story of an ex-vegan:

https://www.cleaneatingkitchen.com/vegan-diet-dangers-health/

Things are changing so fast. We now know that many of the vegetable oils we glugged so enthusiastically a few years ago are much worse for us than lard, and  probably increase the risk of heart disease. So, it looks like we’ll learn to love lard like it’s 1939 again.

Fruit is another minefield of contradictions. Not long ago we were told to eat as much fruit as humanly possible, presumably because it was unlikely anyone could overdose on oranges. Blueberries, we were told, are a superfood that can prevent the cancer we’re all growing as a result of our meat addiction. Armed with this very rare, good news we gleefully poured bucketfuls of berries into the blender in the hope of living to 150. Within a few short weeks however, an alternative truth emerged: the high sugar content in fruit means we may as well drink Coca Cola.

It gets worse. After a thirty thousand year love affair, our most worshipped and romanticised food icon of all time, fresh bread is suddenly the worse thing we eat on a daily basis. News just in is that it’s loaded with salt, sugar, contains very few nutrients if any, and is no better for us than a box of Mr Kiplings.

The problem with advice from colossal institutions like the WHO or the NHS, is that it will never, ever, be up to date. Like ocean going tankers, embarked on a specific course, it is understandably impossible for big organisations to change direction overnight. So much time and money has been invested, millions, if not billions of people in hundreds of countries have been nudged or coaxed to follow certain guidelines, a thousand initiatives have been launched and hundreds of billion dollar deals have been made with Big Pharma. So here we are in 2019, surrounded by advanced technology, armies of super-scientists, legions of researchers and Yottabytes of detailed data, and yet we…actually…don’t…know…what…the…bloody…hell…to…have…for…breakfast. Full English, buttered toast, yoghurt, or a blueberry smoothie? You tell me.

There is, however, hope on the horizon in the shape of our little slab of black glass, yet again. If we wish, our smart-phone will shortly have access to our personal genome: the entire map of our unique DNA and all the biological propensities and fragilities our loving forefathers bestowed upon us. An army of apps will surely follow to advise and warn and encourage us to do what’s best for specifically for us, not generalised, out of date, one-size-fits-all mandates designed for entire populations.

Big data is really powerful when it gets small and personal. Now, pass the butter.

Join me on Twitter @retailfuturist for daily retail rants

  Howard Saunders   Apr 17, 2019   Food, Future, pizza, smartphone, technology, Uncategorized   Comments Off on It’s 2019. We still don’t know what to have for breakfast   Read More