To think the high street and shopping centres will die off completely

[Celeriacacaca]

I went to a local medium sized shopping centre yesterday. Went into W H Smith for a fairly standard item - very young staff member in another area didn't know where to find the item and when I found the right shelf it was empty of stock so no purchase made. Then on to Next as I'm looking for some trousers for work. No staff at all on the floor and it was very surprising to see there was very little stock in any of the styles I was interested in - a couple of 16s and 18s but nothing smaller in four different styles I looked at. Usually Next has a great range of sizes in store but the whole store had very little stock when I looked around.

Debenhams looked like a jumble sale (I know it's having big difficulties) but there was a similar story of low stock in a couple of other normally really good shops and the only place I got what I wanted was at Robert Dyas where the customer service was excellent and at Sainsbury's. So AIBU to think pretty soon many more big name shops just won't exist on the high street, which means shopping centres will become redundant?

If that’s what’s it’s always like then you are probably right but at the moment it’s the big stock switchover to winter/Christmas stock so might be that you just chooses the wrong time - when they are running down stock so they can replace with new lines/Christmas displays?

I suspect we will eventually get a different style of town centre. Small, local shops, eateries, etc with housing above and around. With major shopping and larger housing developments as satellites around.

It will eat up our green zones. Consume smaller towns and villages. But we will have leisure / lifestyle focussed town centres rather than commercial centres in many places.

People will still use town centres. Shops will exists, but stock will mainly be ordered online, with people popping in to pick up orders, rather than shopping online.

In the bigger shops, they are renting out space for coffee shops, nail bars, hair salons, eyebrow bars etc. I think town centres will be more for leisure opportunities rather than just for retail.

My town has barely anything left in it. Just charity shops and coffee shops. I don’t go there anymore. It is also really expensive to park. But if u can park you are only allowed to say for a certain time before u get a ticket. Now exactly welcoming.

When I do go in. There are generally no staff or much in the way of stock. Seriously bad round here.

The high street has been going through fairly dramatic changes for thirty years or so. First you had supermarkets squashing smaller independent grocers then the shopping malls then internet shopping.

It’s evolution really isn’t it? People still like to go and physically select purchases but much less often and it tends to be an outing combined with a meal or socialising.

Also the point about time of year is a good one. Lots of shops are gearing up for Christmas/January sales.