Good news is that some businesses have decided to go back to the high street, in other words and perhaps abusing of this term, they have decided to expand their physical locations. They are opening now new stores. One if them if I remember rightly is a furniture company, the other sells screws and related items for construction. These companies have realised they need to get closer to the customer, who wants to 'touch and feel' the product before buying it.
It seems rather obvious to me that adding value means making sure communication and interaction with the customer is done in the best,possible way and even costly way, if the customer has any real value to the company. Touch and feel used to and still is essential activity of selling and buying things. A good online value proposition will attract buyers to go to your shop rather than going to the competition.
So those who think that online interactions replace everything, you should think twice. We have much to learn from online dating websites about this...
Now the not good news. Mary Portas' experiment of revamping the high streets of a number of towns seems to have failed. 10 of the 12 city centres being experimented with have shrank in terms of their trade. If you thought that the pendulum of online vs offline was swinging again towards offline from the good news, please think again. Are we in for more uncertainty in the UK?
Let me just say that the idea that growth is to happen in the city centres of countries needs revising. To me this is an untenable assumption, perhaps romanticised because many people including myself find it entertaining to go to city centres as many of our ancestors used to. But this type of nostalgia cannot be preserved at the expense of entrepreneurs, or even potential customers. If city centres are not attractive for trade, it is because they do not offer a nice whole experience worth the hassle unless you really need to go there or you enjoy the buzz but just for a while, once or twice during the week. You cannot build a good and sustainable business only on occasions. Because rent, salaries and the like cannot be just paid occasionally.
The problem of city centres and physical locations is not only economic, it is social and cultural. Besides, a savvy entrepreneur would carefully consider his/her finances before paying rent in a place where people do not see life in a full sense of the term.
And where does this leave our online and other information and communications technologies? Well, they could still help attracting people to go, touch and feel the product, but they cannot replace the harsh, complex and admirable reality of life in town centres or elsewhere...maybe they should be used now to show where businesses have gone and try to provide evidence of why they went elsewhere.
So if the pendulum swings again, avoid it !
