To be annoyed that everywhere except London gets forgotten about?

[BarbaraofSeville]

Prompted by another thread about the riveting subject of changing coins.

AIBU to be annoyed that many big businesses appear to forget that anywhere outside the south east even exists?

I live in a large city in northern England, and while we have plenty of facilities (shops, restaurants, parks, theatres, museums etc etc) there are a few businesses that have totally ignored us while opening dozens of Branches in or near London.

Eg Metro Bank, over a dozen branches within the M25, but nothing further away from London than Cambridge!

Uniqlo - Only one of their 10 UK branches is outside London (in Kent).

There are probably others, but that's all that I can think of right now.

AIBU to think that before they open multiple branches that are virtually on the same street in London, they should be opening up in Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Cardiff, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Bristol, Belfast, Nottingham etc instead?

If they did this most people would be within a reasonable distance of a branch, instead of them all being crammed in one tiny area of the country.

We have money, we would use these businesses. In fact, many of us probably have a lot more disposable income than people in the south east because we don't have to spend stupid money on housing!

Yes more people live within an easy journey of Leeds than live in it, but likewise if you include all the people who live in the adjacent counties to London and can (and do) hop on a train for a shopping trip, that's nearly 19 million.

"But I'm really surprised that a city the size of Sheffield doesn't have a GAP"

The Gap store in Meadowhall closed last year. The nearest one to me is in Birstall (Leeds) or Castleford. My nearest Pret is in Leeds.

I don't mind being forgotten by companies so much, it's getting ignored by the government that pisses me off.

Take public transport for example, it would cost £500m for the first stage of electrifying the Transpennine line (not extending it but allowing newer, better and faster train stock) and this was promised in the election and then promptly dumped despite being desperately needed to improve connections across the North. This is pennies compared to the amount of government money spent on the CrossRail in London

Meanwhile HS2 continues as a vanity project because obviously the only thing important to northern cities is getting to London

London makes a disproportionate fraction of the GDP because all the businesses are there, not because of relative disposable incomes.

I live in Liverpool and couldn't give a shit about waitrose uniqlo etc I think we're doing fine but apparently we have the fastest growing economy outside London!

London has 10% of the population and 22% of the GDP (high house prices?)
so 90% of the population don't live in London and 78% of the GDP can be attributed to the rest of the country
would be interested to know how much Government spending on infrastructure/facilities is spent for this 10% of the population.
living on the Welsh border (but in England) we are not recipients of the largesse of the northern powerhouse or the London bubble

True Mollie but then you get to live on the Welsh borders which is beautiful!

It's pretty obvious, isn't it? If a Pret or a Gap opens in a big town and then closes down, it probably isn't because they've forgotten about that town.

Shops do very careful analysis of town demographics and economic situation before moving into a location. These businesses have a key demographic threshold and income per capita requirements.

What is interesting is that my town is an economic death zone. All its major industry shut in the 1980s.

However recently we suddenly got a lot of upmarket South East type establishments and more coming. They have got it wrong. Its clear they are making no money that have moved here. On the surface the town is a prosperous Cathedral city but in reality it is severely deprived. They will close. They always do. Its a marker of the end of the economic cycle It only picks up just enough in this town right at the end of every economic cycle to bring these shops in but then slumps again.

The rents o the High Street are far too high to support these businesses. There are so many of the coffee chains here now that for most of the day they have 4 - 5 customers in.

It's well over 10% of the resident population, and higher if you add in inwards commuters.

Yes, there is more of the population spread over the rest of the country, but if you want to reach a lot of consumers, you are looking for the areas with the highest population densities.

If you rank those, you have to go down to 21st place before you reach a council area outside London.

I live in a town on the edge of London. We used to have a Uniqlo but it closed down, disappointingly, so I am assuming their strategy of central London stores is based on their experience of sales elsewhere.

Okay well just on the evidence of these initial posts, Gaps, Uniqlos and Prets HAVE opened stores regionally and people have "voted with their feet" and the stores have closed down. So don't blame the retailers. If shoppers want them, they're hardly going to ignore them out of some Londoncentric prejudice. It's simple supply and demand. They go where they can endure.

Hey Bun, I live in Sheffield too. IMO it is unusually crap for decent shops. If you go to York or Leeds, it's much better.

However, I'm happy now a Jigsaw has opened in Meadowhall, but the city centre is just dire, apart from JL.

I've got to agree that up here on border of County Durham in the dead zone between Leeds/York and Newcastle it doesn't feel as though we have much support from businesses or the government.

Lived in London and agree that it takes forever to get to some parts. It is, however, at least possible to do it. Up here, if you want to go to the nearest town on public transport, you'd better be wanting to stay for either 10 minutes or 24 hours. We're not on a railway. Road links are fine but if you don't drive you're doomed.

As for my own beautiful market town, it has a sprinkling of (excellent) independent shops and about 70% un-used space or charity shops. Rents are too high, there is no infrastructure to support investment and businesses that do open up tend to have a depressingly short shelf life. We have as of 6 years ago a WH Smith and I can't tell you how exciting it was when Costa opened a branch 2 years ago. That's it for mainstream for us.

Wish very much that the claims of Northern Powerhouses showed a few more signs of happening as this truly is a beautiful place to live and work - but it is seriously under-funded. At the moment it's a pretty shell.

The other thing to remember that the online versus bricks and mortar shopping habits of people are rapidly changing.

In a densely populated place with high per capita income where many people are out all day like London the bricks and mortar model still works. In a place like my town the customers for a high end shop are so few and far between thay might need a radius of 50 miles to find enough customers and there an online model works better.

Obviously that won't work for a coffee shop and hair salons which needs walk in trade. However, I get a lot of stuff delivered now because it quiet simply is easier than travelling 20 miles ot the next large city which has the shop I want to find a product in.

I really think online is unstoppable and outside London the high street and even out of town shopping centres are going to continue to struggle to attract big name businesses. I know one f our shopping centres is going to be converted entirely to café, restaurant outlets. The coucil are moving to a plan where the town centre becomes a place to eat, see a film, go to a nightclub, work in an office and live in rather than a place with just shops.

Businesses exist to make profit.

If there was any way for them to make money outside London be assured that they would.

Businesses carefully analyse not only how many people are within shopping distance but also how many of those people are spending.

Our habits, desires and dislikes are all common knowledge now, thanks to FB et al.

London bashing is a popular sport on mumsnet isn't it?

You can tell which posters live in the SE

In all seriousness, as pp have mentioned it is just indicative of the lack of investment all round. Maybe if infrastructure were better and people were more easily able to access large cities in the North then companies would be more likely to invest? As it is, all the government seem to care about is shaving a few minutes off the journey between Mamchester and London rather than updating outdated and patchy Norther rail services.

It's just stuff.

Maybe I'm a yokel but we have no major chains in our town (unless you count New Look?) and the poshest supermarket we have is Sainsburys, and we get by just fine. I can't honestly say I've ever wished our highstreet looked more like Central London.

bunbaker boden is a catalogue clothing company. Their sales model is not to have shops

It's not retail that's the issue though, is it? It is the media and politicians' utter insistence that only the city matters in the UK.

Why else are they planning a high speed rail link that only goes from Birmingham to London? The terminus is separated from the line that goes to the continent by a couple of hundred metres, but it won't be joined because there's no call for travel from the Midlands to Europe apparently. Of course, people don't want to travel from north of Birmingham to London at reasonable speeds either. Or go Liverpool to Newcastle, M/cr to Cambridge, or York to Birmingham in anything less than a day either

I don't know what those shops are but I find the waitrose store location map quite funny.

Try living in Scotland (which exists outwith Glasgow or Edinburgh!)

I was pretty much going to say the same as moonmax. Living in the far NW (my nearest town washed away a month ago), we have a lot of empty shops, betting and charity shops. We run a small independent shop, but had to locate on an industrial estate (ha! ten units plonked by the tip next to a housing estate), as the rent for the nice shops in the village are so high we would be constantly stressed trying to make the rent - which is crazy.

But I love the pretty shell (great term!), and wouldn't move from here. And I have a GAP outlet at Gretna.

This thing that annoys me is that even though we have big shops, the stock is tailored to an older demographic. Try buying pretty, fitting bras for a pre teen in shops that seem to have been lost at some point in the 1950's.

This is making me think newcastle is pretty good for shopping. We have 2 Prets in the city centre, Gap concession in house of Fraser at the metro centre and 2 outlets (royal quays and team valley).
I would like to see a Uniqlo and a Muji.

London bashing is a popular sport on mumsnet isn't it?

Yep. Ignore the factual reasons as to why businesses want to trade in London and just come out with untrue gems like Travelling anywhere in London takes fucking ages.

Yawn.