DEAR BORIS

We need your help urgently, but the good news is we want you to do absolutely nothing.

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that retail and hospitality have been utterly devastated since the C-word arrived, but I’ll tell you anyway. Only the richest stores will survive, only restaurants with serious cash in the bank will make it through. Hundreds of thousands of our shops, bars, pubs, clubs and restaurants will never reopen I’m afraid, but by doing absolutely nothing you can save them.

The truth is, the pandemic has hurried along the inevitable. It has reached into the future, grabbed it around its stupid, skinny neck and dragged it kicking and screaming right onto the doorstep of number ten. But don’t worry,  I have the solution.

I don’t have to spell it out but, sod it, I will: The economy is like a giant flashy wristwatch: an incredibly complex but highly sensitive mechanism that’s taken centuries to find its natural rhythm. Some of it runs fast and smooth while other bits clunk along reluctantly, but when it’s working it interconnects every single one of us so that the girl that bakes the bread for the sandwiches that feed the railway workers that get the trains rolling that take commuters to their offices to design and make the stuff they sell in the shops to enable our lovely baker to buy the things she needs to keep her life ticking along nicely. Well, that’s the idea anyway.

But over the last few years, with each new regulation, with each incremental increase in rent and rates, we could only respond by passing on the extra costs to our increasingly bewildered customers. There’s a clue something’s going awry when it costs the best part of five quid for a basic double decaf latte with mocha sprinkles.

On top of all this, national chains with hilariously ambitious spreadsheets often paid above market rents, which in turn hiked the prices for the rest of us. Increased rents meant increased business rates and so click by click the delicate mechanism was ratcheted tighter and tighter until…well, you know what happened.

(By the way, when you next bump into Rishi please thank him for all his help. Getting paid to watch movies for a year was a bit of a novelty at first, but now everyone’s completed Netflix, frankly we’re bored witless.)

Please don’t think this is a plea from a special interest group or a specific corner of the market whining for extra help. No. Our high streets, our shops and restaurants are the lifeblood of everybody’s community. No one will be unaffected by the retail apocalypse when the shockwave hits later this year. Reality bites and this time it will leave a fatal wound, for sure.

Look, I get it. I get that you need to increase taxes. I even get that we don’t really have to balance the books like a household budget because it’s more important to show a decent long term credit record. (Otherwise what sort of a madman would spend £100 billion on HS2??) I also understand it’s all about legacy, but here’s the thing, we’re at a crossroads now Boris. Continue where we left off in March 2020 and you will be remembered as the PM who ushered in the era of the ghost town, the tumbleweed community, the lost generation…you get my drift. You enjoyed the taxes when times were good but, let’s be honest, taxes are brakes on growth. And no sane person could believe our communities need slowing down right now.

That’s why I’m asking you to do nothing: Abolish business rates, simple as that. Stop the clipboard army of surveyors and measurers, calculators, adjusters and valuers. Stop the rate reviews, rate review delays and banish the rate collectors. (The cost of the admin-mechanism must be…well, hundreds of millions alone). Imagine, bringing an end to the endless fighting, disputing, negotiating and renegotiating, all of it solved overnight. By you.

And please don’t consider rates holidays or strategic delays to our punishment. Telling a child you won’t slap it until next year does not make for a well balanced upbringing.

Boris, simply remove your foot from our collective necks, stand back and fold your arms as the whoosh of energy tousles your iconic mop. Oh yes, it will be instant. Watch as our lungs balloon with oxygen, our eyes snap open and the entrepreneur in us awakens, alive with the long forgotten electricity of enthusiasm. No longer will our towns feel locked down by the likes of Costa and WH Smith. Given the chance we shall reclaim them. Our children and our children’s children will once again grow up knowing that their local high street really is theirs, and that one day they may bring their own ideas to market. 

Unlocking our nation of shopkeepers Boris, this should be your legacy. Unleashing the army, not of taxers, naysayers, measurers and restricters, but the gargantuan hidden army of muffin makers, cake bakers and dressmakers, the sandwich toasters, chicken roasters, electronic fixers, baristas and cocktail mixers alongside specialists in house cleaning, dog preening and bao bun steaming. These people, these are the good people that will get the arteries of Britain pumping again, and only you can make it happen. 

Do nothing Boris, that’s what we want. Nothing is more important right now.

These images of closed and shuttered shops and restaurants were taken on the anniversary of our first lockdown, in Kensington, Chelsea and Soho, the UK’s wealthiest postcodes.

Follow me on Twitter @retailfuturist for daily insights and wry musings.

  Howard Saunders   Mar 24, 2021   Uncategorized   Comments Off on DEAR BORIS   Read More

IT’S 2021. MEET HOMO-TREPIDATIOUS

The bounce back was not very bouncy. There were exceptions, of course. Like the queues at McDonald’s in July last year. A nation of fast food addicts certainly needed its fix. They stood in line for a good forty minutes, grinning and giggling like over excited seven year olds. Happy meals indeed.

There’s definitely a new civility in the air. We’re less frustrated about delays, less hurried and certainly more polite when we finally get our hands on our goods. Many welcome this new civility as long overdue, but the truth is it is born entirely from fear. Like badly berated schoolchildren we obey instruction without question, keep our toes tucked tidily behind the yellow line, and jump the instant the man in the fluorescent jacket raises his arm.

And look what’s happened to pubs. Pub culture was the very foundation of British society. It’s where workers and bosses, landowners and farmer’s hands laughed together across the froth of their beer, untethered by status or social hierarchy. Sadly, the bustling, beery, raucous chorus that was our local boozer has been well and truly throttled by hazard tapes, warning signs and perspex screens. Not dead exactly, just lifeless. Orderly lines of locals supping ale at a safe distance is not a pub, and never will be.

Orderly, civilised and respectful it may look, but that’s because we’ve been scared witless (or shitless, if you prefer). We’ve had the fear of God drummed into us and we’ve chanted the weekly mantras, bashed our saucepans and everything. We may pass each other and exchange polite greetings but we’re both thinking ‘He’s probably got it. Christ, she looks poorly’. Oh yes, the script for the Twenties has been written: Homo Trepidatious is born.

Now come with me to London Town. (We’re travelling by drone, of course, so hold on tight.)  We are hovering directly over Oxford Circus, above what was once the mighty TopShop. It’s June 2021 and there are very few people milling around. The red buses scurry past pretending nothing has changed, but they ferry a scanty cargo. The Portland stone bears its scars of the amputated logotype like a bitter trophy of better days. Much better days. Nike Town is open and good old Uncle John Lewis is still there to welcome us, albeit in mask and visor, but most of his neighbours have moved out. Tezenis and Microsoft were the first to break the circle. Those shops that steadfastly remain unshuttered do so, it seems, in the hope that those better days will return. They may have a long wait. 

As we swish our way down Regent Street it’s much the same story. Most of the passers-by are local office workers (You can tell by their pace). There are a handful of visitors and even a few sightseers, but there’s not much for them to see today. It’s very clear just how many tourists used to visit London. Brooks Brothers, Desigual, Reiss, All Saints, Ted Baker and Levi’s all gave up on their flagships last year. Hamley’s is frozen into a kind of hibernation waiting for good news. Apple, Burberry and Mappin & Webb are hanging in there, thankfully.

Curving into Piccadilly Circus, the brazen billboards dance poignantly to their dwindling crowd, for they know no better. Whirring left into Shaftesbury Avenue, past rows of homeless tents the damage is obvious. None of the theatres survived, though one or two have been cuckooed for private events. Even the famously irritating Trafalgar Square pigeons are somewhat sparse, presumably having abandoned The Smoke for fatter pickings.

But hardest hit of all is Soho. This is where I lived and worked in my twenties and thirties. It’s where I grew up, where I learnt how exhilarating the world of design and retail can be. Such heady, happy, hard working days. That’s where my old agency was in Soho Square. It now lies hollow and soulless. The entire city is riddled with vacant office space. Like a watery-eyed Ebeneezer, I can picture the hip young guys and girls pouring down the steps at lunchtime to sit in the sun for half an hour. And there’s one of my favourite bars, now shuttered in clothes of iron and chipboard. The deli’s barely recognisable with its white-washed windows, but that’s where I could be found at least three times a week, back in the day. So many of the restaurants I loved have closed, and all but a handful of sandwich bars remain to feed the lunchtime workers. A little over a year ago this place was buzzing with what felt like a billion bars boasting of a nightlife that would see you right through to your Pret breakfast. Surprisingly, some of the more robust brands have vanished too: Wahaca, Barrafina and Princi to name a few. Even Pizza Express pretty much disappeared overnight. It’s sad to think that here on Wardour Street is where it started its journey fifty six years ago. Only a couple of private drinking clubs act as vanguard to keep the Soho spirit alive. Just. It feels like we’ve returned to the 1940s.

I’m sure I’ve cheered you all up with this news from the future, but it’s time to head home now. I don’t like to stay out too long these days. London isn’t what it used to be for sure, but as Joni once sang “you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.”

Finally, I must say a very, very big thank you to the highly talented Jan Enkelmann for his stunning Lockdown London images. Thank you Jan.

Now please join me on Twitter @retailfuturist for retail rants, predictions and wry observations

  Howard Saunders   Jun 01, 2020   Uncategorized   Comments Off on IT’S 2021. MEET HOMO-TREPIDATIOUS   Read More

YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING

Kids ruin Christmas. It’s not their fault, of course, but as November drags to its drizzly demise the world inexplicably switches into kiddy mode. Every shop, every advert, every programme and every song addresses us as if we’ve just turned six: fully grown TV presenters grin toothily in tinsel covered pixie hats explaining things in over enunciated tones as if their audience is thumb-sucking and nodding in agreement. Even our much lauded Christmas ads have become unbearably cutesy as a parade of lovable fire-breathing dragons (John Lewis) animated carrots (Aldi) animated dogs (Costa) or simply Disney characters lifted directly from Frozen (Iceland) are splurged across our screens in a tidal wave of diabetes-inducing drivel. And as if to add insult to injury, our ‘leaders’, our pathetic politicians promise us an ever-lengthening list of things we’re as likely to witness as Santa’s fat arse in our fake fireplace.

So, partly to escape my homegrown Yuletide blues I hopped across to Salzburg for advent weekend in search of the true spirit of Christmas. (And even though I tweeted my intentions I had no idea that I would actually find it! More of that later.)

Salzburg old town is ridiculously cute too, but in a grown up, stein-clinking kinda way. The Christmas markets have not been plundered by filterless-fag smoking reprobates and street-hustlers, and are instead largely owned by local families. And they’re not all selling the same imported plastic shite either. Each stall has a respectful, symbiotic relationship with its neighbours. The bauble connoisseur is adjacent to the knick-knackery, the miniature figurine specialist is flanked by a lantern stall and a flavoured oil salesman. They segment by colour too, with one stand selling wares in shades of white to contrast with next door’s rich reds and golds. There’s also a fair slice of religious iconography, this being the historical centre of the Counter-Reformation when the Catholic Church turned up the volume on all that icon stuff. (The ‘Altstadt’ alone is home to 27 churches) I found this unusually refreshing, coming from an uber-secular city where religious iconography is avoided like, err, a religion.

Having browsed, nibbled and Gluhweined a good half dozen advent markets I decided to take a break from all the jollity and go for a Sunday walk, because well, it was Sunday. After half an hour’s staggering up the stupidly steep stone steps just across from the Mozartsteg Bridge, I seriously began to question my sanity. At each stone ‘landing’ where I paused to wheeze noisily, I was faced with yet another stretch of stairs, as if trapped in some impossible Escher etching. Finally I reached, surprise surprise, yet another church, but I still felt Kapuzinerberg Hill remained uncharted, despite its managed pathways and clear signs. And so this huffing, puffing pioneer marched onward and upward. Very upward. 

Occasionally I came across another idiot coming downhill through the forest towards me, presumably from somewhere, so I pushed on. Heroically I parted bracken and bravely stepped over a few perilous boulders until finally, thank god, the slope softened into a level clearing. Snuggled into the crest of the hill sat a stone lodge by the spittle-making name of Franziskischlossl. I approached cautiously, pulling back a dark blue velvet curtain behind the weighty wooden door. I felt like one of the Wise Men arriving at the stable, for yes, I had just discovered the true spirit of Christmas! Below me, nestled in a courtyard way above the city, looking down along the majestic Salzach, was a small band of Christmas hunters just like me. A motley crew of walkers and respectful revellers were gathered around an open fire pit, drinking Sporer hot orange punch and Stiegl beer. I’m sure I‘d have heard the angels singing Halleluja, if ‘Last Christmas’ hadn’t been playing.

Here, my friends, is the real Christmas spirit. It’s not in the shimmering, shop windows, nor is it on the faces of those infantile TV presenters or even in the heartstring tugging supermarket ads . You won’t find it on Amazon, Twitter or Youtube, and you certainly won’t find it on Instagram. You can’t even Google it. No, the true spirit of Christmas is tucked away, often where you’d least expect it, in simple places where like-minded strangers gather around a fire to clink glasses and wish each other well.

Thanks for reading. Now, do the right thing and follow me on Twitter @retailfuturist for daily retail musings.

  Howard Saunders   Dec 11, 2019   Brand, Retail, Uncategorized   Comments Off on YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING   Read More