HOW TO SAVE THE HIGH STREET

Revolution, retail-apocalypse, whatever you call it there’s little doubt our high streets are struggling. Savethehighstreet.org is an organisation, a movement, dedicated to making our local high streets better and stronger. You can join them by clicking here 

In the meantime, here’s the transcript of my interview:

Can you tell us about the work you do as a retail expert?

I designed stores for over twenty-five years. I learnt my trade at one of London’s biggest and best agencies: Fitch. Rodney Fitch was a pioneer of retail design and believed that design was a force to make people’s lives better. I still carry that with me. Today, I travel, write and talk about the future of retail. It’s so important we don’t lose sight of the fact that shops are the foundation of a thriving community. That’s what’s important to me.

What’s the biggest challenge facing the high street today?

A three letter word: tax. It would be amiss of me not to talk about this issue. Business rates have become unsustainable and must be addressed, not just for businesses, but for the sake of our town and city centres. I’m not one of the current voices that believes punishing Amazon will save the high street. It won’t.

What is the biggest issue facing independent business owners today that you feel is not being spoken about, or addressed properly?

A decade ago everyone was bemoaning the ‘cookie cutter’ high street: the same brands, with the same store designs, so that every town looked pretty much identical. Today, many of these brands are dying and there’s a golden opportunity for local independents to show us how clever and creative they are. It’s a process that began in Brooklyn, New York and it’s spreading across the globe. People want their towns to be individual and unique, they want to buy local produce wherever possible, and would love to see local designers and entrepreneurs coming to market. So it’s for all of us to help and encourage the process I call Brooklynization. Governments, local authorities and landlords must cut us some slack. In turn, local retailers need to smarten up and show more enthusiasm. At risk of offending your entire readership, there are an awful lot of scruffy, dirty, lacklustre independent stores out there. Amongst the gems, of course.

What are the most pressing concerns you hear from local retailers?

Well, I guess I hear the same stories as everyone else: Amazon, Brexit, business rates, unresponsive councils, the weather, there are some that probably blame Donald Trump! I believe, if we can get the financial model working properly, the future will be very exciting. Consider how quickly the craft beer industry took off. Within five short years, it’s turned the world of beer upside down and created thousands of new breweries, bars, new jobs, and some much better beer to boot! And exactly as in Brooklyn, there’s no reason we can’t have the same growth in independent bakeries, butchers, florists, delis, barber shops, bicycle specialists and local fashion designers. Now that would bring us all back to town!

How do you think we can attract more footfall to local high streets?

I think I just partly answered that. Predominantly, we have to get away from this notion of the town centre selling us ‘stuff’. We can get ‘stuff’ on the internet. (There’s tons of it on there). High Streets, on the other hand, are our communities. We go into town to meet with friends and family, pick up some essentials, browse a bit, then stop and have a coffee to watch the world go by. Humans have been doing this since Romans gathered in the forum to see what’s new. Amazon won’t change that. We need to get over this current financial hurdle and encourage our towns to be communities again, with buskers and tastings and fairs, and all the weird and wonderful things us humans get up to when we’re not at work.

What is the best bit of advice you could give to someone who is looking to start their first independent retail business?

Be niche and be nice. We are witnessing the death of mediocre, mass market generalists. Stores that stood for nothing in particular, were specialists in nothing in particular and sold much the same stuff as everybody else. I’d say pick a niche area and excel in it. Make the best muffins, skin cream or leather goods the world has ever seen or tasted, but don’t do all three! You will find your locals should be keen to embrace your homegrown star status. And that’s when the rest of the world will want to know about you, online of course. And yes, with the rise of robots and Artificial Intelligence, hospitality will be more important in the future than it is now. So be nice!

When has a local business surprised you in a positive way and how did they do it?

This is a great question, as it gives me the opportunity to mention two personal favourites, from very different ends of the spectrum, as well as the country. First is Webb Bros, a hardware store in my hometown of Woodbridge, Suffolk. It’s a store very clearly from the Arkwright school of design (Open All Hours, Ronnie Barker) This place is a veritable Aladdin’s cave of bits and pieces that we will all need, at some point. But most importantly, at the centre, beneath the hanging brushes and spools of multi-coloured rope, stands Maggie, the oracle of all things that need to be done. Seriously, there is not a task nor job on planet earth that Maggie doesn’t know how to do and what tool you’ll need to do it. Now, what town is there out there that doesn’t need a store like Webb Bros?

Secondly, there are two very good people in the town of Totnes who own and run two fashion stores by the name of Fifty5a. Malin and Aron Hosie visited us in New York and absolutely hoovered up the independent vibe that is Brooklyn, and brought it back to Totnes. They are both creative and endlessly enthusiastic, and as a result, their stores feel alive, charming, personable, elegantly curated and cosy. They really ‘get’ how an independent store can outdo the chains. That’s the key to success.

Where can we find out more about you?

You can read my blogs and rants on all things retail here: www.22and5.com/blog/

Email me here: howard@22and5.com

And follow me on Twitter @retailfuturist

  Howard Saunders   Sep 11, 2018   Uncategorized   Comments Off on HOW TO SAVE THE HIGH STREET   Read More

SHIT SHOPS

London is infested with them: the tacky newsagent with the sponsored fascia that hasn’t seen a soapy sponge since 1987, the struggling hair salon with its camp wink-of-a-name painted in a 70s funk style font, the print shop with an illuminated logo big enough to be seen from the M25, the crappy café where coffee still comes in granules, the oddball ‘boutique’ with its deranged, contortionist mannequins, the downright dodgy mobile phone repair shop, the dour and dusty furniture store, its windows papered in fluorescent exclamations, and not forgetting the ubiquitous ‘convenience’ store, plastered with more stickers than the arse-end of a hippy’s camper van. If forced to enter one, we might catch ourselves chewing the fat with the owner, swaying our heads in synchronized dismay at the inevitable decline of local stores. We tut loudly in agreement that it’s the fault of the supermarkets, Amazon and Brexit, and yet we’d never dream of telling the truth, that their shop is dirty, scruffy, outdated, over-cluttered and utterly irrelevant. In short: shit.

We’ve become so used to living with shit shops that they’re almost invisible. Despite the fact that they must make up 90% of London’s retail, they barely get a mention in relation to the current crisis. Clearly, they are such an embarrassment to the press and the retail Twittersphere, that we’ve mentally vanished them, in order to concentrate on the woes of decent looking establishments.

Or perhaps you’re one of those inverted snobs that takes a perverse pride in your shitty environs. A country-lubber that revels in their beta post code by way of knocking the districts you can’t afford to live in. ‘No, Marylebone, Hampstead and Chelsea are not real enough for me,’ they whine, sitting in alpha post code pubs… for Sunday lunch only, you understand. These are the same folk who loudly bemoan the gentrification of their personal urban shithole, but you so know they are checking Rightmove.com twice a day to see if the artisan bakery has helped nudge up local property prices.

Oh, and don’t think the posh districts are exempt. There are plenty of shit shops snuggled in between the tasteful ones in the most salubrious parts of our city.

Londoners, take a good look around you on your way home tonight. The saggy, plastic canopies and filthy windows are the result of laziness and ignorance, not poverty. It wasn’t always like this. These stores are the rotting teeth in what was once a radiant parade of a smile. A century ago these shop-fronts would have been scrubbed every morning at 7am sharp, by a crisp-aproned shopkeeper with a sense of pride in his business and a long wooden mop handle. Today’s proprietor, by contrast, is a multi-tasker: one hand to point the card reader, the other to continue texting.

Independent they may be, but shop-fronts are the architecture of our environment, our community, and in that sense they belong to us all. Grubby, neglected shops may be moribund, but they are nonetheless busy sending us microscopic messages of misery every time we pass by. Every day they make us feel a tiny bit deflated, a little less good about the day ahead. A little bit shit.

But thankfully, middle class Millennials and hipstery types know good retail instinctively. That’s why their store designs hark back to Victorian ideals of shopkeeperdom. They know that a black fascia with a discrete gold font has far greater impact that the metre tall, yellow plastic letters it replaced. They know we are drawn to tidy entrances and well merchandised stalls. The harsh truth is that inside your local shit shop, there’s not an over-worked old lady struggling to keep up. No, it’s much more likely to be someone who doesn’t know one end of a broom from the other. Someone who thinks of a shop as a vessel for stuff that the public want, and little more.

I daydream about a hit TV series called ‘Shit Shop SOS’, where an undercover squad of retail enthusiasts wash, tidy, redesign and merchandise local stores, only to be paid in customers’ gasps of wonderment. I muse about kick-starting a hashtag campaign entitled #letsgiveashit to encourage our sad and grimy independents to spruce themselves up a bit.

Alas, there is barely any need. Shop by shop, street by street, the shit shops are dying. Waiting in the wings are hungry, stylish young innovators eager to take their place as soon as the rent and rates will allow. London is not just one of the world’s greatest cities, it is famous for its retail. Let’s encourage our local shit shops to clean up, sort their signs out and put something interesting in the window. In short: #letsgiveashit

Postscript: Oh yes, if you’d like to see a short showreel of the shit shops in my neighbourhood please check out this blog on my website here: 22and5.com/shit-shops/

Join me on Twitter @retailfuturist or at the very least read more of my blogs and rants here:  22and5.com/blog/

  Howard Saunders   Jun 25, 2018   Uncategorized   1 Comment   Read More

A LIFELONG LOVE AFFAIR

It’s second nature for me to intellectualize brands. I’ve worked with them all my life: deconstructing meaning, reconstructing a nuanced visual language that answers a series of strategic values aimed at convincing consumers of their worth. You know, all the stuff those of us in design deal with every day. Except, we also know that authentic brands, the ones that connect with us on a visceral, emotional level, cannot be constructed strategically or intellectually. Just like us, they take decades to mature and blossom, until they have tales to tell and experiences to share. Among these authentic brands there are a few that stop you in your tracks with a punch to the belly that leaves you wanting more. Ducati is one of these.

My lifelong love affair with this brand began in the late eighties when I set my eyes upon the thing I would treasure only marginally less than my own two, adorable children. Scratch beneath the obvious chromium plated, boyish lust for speed and there’s so much to fall for.

There’s no push button starter here. Instead, you must reach into the heart of the beast and take time coaxing him, priming him lovingly before you kick-start him into life. Once fired up, a glorious cacophony of guttural growls, whines and gasps unleash his story in an instant. Use your X-ray imagination to slice into his heaving chest and witness an unfathomable carnival of whirring cogs and spiraling spindles, each crafted for one task: to launch you at silly, silly speeds. Fear and vulnerability are fundamentals to Ducati. Not just the rider’s vulnerability, but the machine itself, for each integral element of this metallic monster was sculpted by a modern day, grease-monkey Michelangelo. German, American or Japanese machines are robustly engineered for practicality, longevity, endurance and cost. Italians don’t think like that. They are artists willing to shave every last micrometer off their work to ensure it is as light and as perfectly formed as possible. Fragility is fundamental here too.

Many years ago, one Ducatisti proudly showed me a large dent in his bike’s frame. This, he explained, was where they had to make a little extra room to squeeze the engine in. It’s these man-made imperfections, you see, that give art its value.

The divine yet dangerous dance that marries technology, engineering and art has propelled Ducati to the front of the starting grid and, more importantly, to the top of the list of the world’s most desirable brands. All that heritage, heartache and glory has been condensed into six little letters. Cast your eye across the curves of the silver back that bears its name, then tell me you’ve not fallen.

This article is taken from the recently published book: Brand Stories from Brand Champions devised & curated by david.roth@wpp.com Read more about it here

Join me on Twitter @retailfuturist and read more of my blogs here:  andcom.uk9.fcomet.com/blog/

  Howard Saunders   May 02, 2018   Uncategorized   Comments Off on A LIFELONG LOVE AFFAIR   Read More