The future of the high street

[sunnydaytoday0]

I was just reading that Boots have announced they will close 300 stores over the next year. That's a lot of stores and high streets that will be losing yet another shop. They will however still have many stores remaining so it's not as if the whole company is closing.

Is anyone else dismayed that so many big retail names have gone under ever since the financial crash 15 years ago, and that given the economic outlook that many more could do so, or like Boots more individual shops will simply close, hitting some areas hard in particular. Is it inevitable a lot of places will become complete ghost towns? In the future is it just going to be a choice for many people of the internet or travelling much further to buy whatever you might need? I guess you can include banks and post offices etc in this too.

The thing is if we want high street shops to remain, we actually need to use them. We can't shop on line and then complain about town shops closing.

Business taxes should be reformed, to be based on turnover not building size and location.

And as for banks they want you to do every thing on line. It is really hard to go into my branch in town and actually get any kind of service.

What @3dogsandarabbit said. Amazon and online shopping is so easy now I’m not surprised a lot of physical stores are closing. We need to think about the future role of high street, what do we actually want? I’m envisioning more leisure uses and perhaps managed work space

Boots have a lot of very small local outlets that I assume just aren’t turning a buck. We have one in our suburb. It gets custom but can’t imagine it’s a money spinner.

boots is the biggest rip off shop going. insane prices vs other shops. was shocked last time i went in. everything 2 x as expensive as everywhere else!

More housing too. Some towns could convert half the retail core into apartments/town houses and have a really concentrated high street with more independent shops and leisure places with a boosted population on the doorstep.

Yes the question for me isn't just can the high street be saved, or is it worth saving, it's - what are we saving it for? The problem where I live isn't just that a lot of shops have closed, it's that the units are empty for a long time and nothing is replacing them with an alternative use. The retail parks are doing better, but without good public transport I don't see that will be helpful long term especially with net zero targets.

Parking costs are an issue in killing my local town (we live rurally with no public transport). If I go to the big Tesco, they have free parking and I can get most of the things I need.

If I go into town to local butcher or greengrocer I have to hunt down a space and pay £1.50 before I’ve even been into a shop.

How can the small independent businesses compete?

Pedestrianisation hasnt helped. People of limited mobility who do have £££ to spend wont shop if its made uncomfortable or painful for them

We have two large branches of boots in our city centre plus a small handful of others dotted around the suburbs. Our nearest is tiny, and whilst it’s usually reasonably busy it doesn’t carry that many lines so I’m more likely to go to boots in town if I need more than just the odd thing. Also, we have two supermarkets in our suburb and between them they cover most of what our boots does, with the exception of the pharmacy, but again we have a few of those too. I wouldn’t be surprised if our local boots is earmarked for closure.

The reality is that the high street stores are not getting the footfall to justify staying open. It is so much easier for many consumers to order online and receive their item within 24hours. Many high street stores do not have the physical space to carry the full range of items that they sell online so it is easier for consumers to buy online. With work, family, caring and cost of parking/fuel etc it much easier and understandable to order online.

Have they announced the names of those 300 stores yet? Can't seem to find them anywhere?

Boots is just way too expensive in comparison to other shops that sell similar products

Boots have a huge always empty shop in the local high street, wouldn't be surprised if its one of the 300. The next town over is redeveloping the high street as a big park/leisure area, I imagine that's what lots of towns will eventually do.

I would love to shop more on the high street but I almost always hit two problems:

• They don’t have my size
• They don’t have the thing I want in stock

I do lots of research online before purchasing items that cost a bit more but the item I settle on never seems to be available in stores which forces me to buy online.

Boots is really pricy for simple items that can be purchased for much cheaper at stores like savers, b and m, home bargains, supermarkets etc…

It's their pharmacy stores that they are closing. Pharmacies are paid via the NHS and have not had any increase in this payment in England for around five years now. If you add on increases in NMW, fuel cost and everything else in the last 12-18 months it's hardly surprising. There are many pharmacies in England closing down. Currently beong expected to provide more services, but not increasing the income the pharmacies are able to generate.

The article says they are closing stores that are close to others. So my town centre has two boots a large and a small store. I expect they will close the smaller of the two stores and try to transfer as many pharmacy customers to the larger one as they can.

I'm disappointed by the lack of quality of what's on the high street at the moment. I was looking for a new wallet - didn't want to buy online as I wanted to try it in my hands - the only one I could find that wasn't made of cheap-looking faux leather was a Radley one in a department store costing mega £££. A few years ago the likes of River Island etc. would have had decent leather ones. Same goes for clothes - nothing but awful synthetics. I mostly buy second hand, fortunately, but down the line all the second hand stuff will be the crap that's in the shops now.

The thing is that high street shops in my experience are complacent about either attracting new customers or retaining existing ones. Customer knowledge or service is often abysmal, somewhere like Argos or curry’s most things are out of stock so you have no choice but to order online. A lot of shops have hardly any staff on the tills as there are often a couple of self service check out’s available which results in large queues at the manned tills.

It’s just not enjoyable going shopping anymore, stressful and disappointing. If high street want to get more people visiting and spending they need to implement effective strategies which are attractive to shoppers.

I wouldn't be surprised if our small high street one closes, we have a much larger one two miles away on the retail park. The report said that the staff would be offered jobs at the other stores

Tk maxx usually have good leather wallets, although the one in the high street near us has closed lol. The only decent shops near us are in retail parks which are not as convenient if you don't drive.

TK Maxx was where I ended up 😄- in an out of town retail park. Exactly as you say, I had to wait till DH could drop me there as I don't drive.

High streets need to start offering things you can’t get online - and not just bloody barbers and vape shops!

Even the big branches of stores in my local big shopping centre don’t have the range I can get on their website but they could offer great customer service. I wanted to buy a Kindle recently but the only places I could actually hold one and see the reading experience were Curry’s on an out of town park (1 model) or a second hand one in CEX. John Lewis had them but only boxed, no display models. They’d have sold it to me if I’d been allowed to actually look at what I was buying - the assistant told me to go on YouTube instead 😩

The only time I have noticed the local town being busy is when the cost of living payment came out, it was much busier than Christmas. Have no idea if people even go out drinking any more, used to be busy with students on certain nights, don't even know if that still happens (probably does).

..and also not particularly great customer service either.

Things are changing all the time. When I was young, everyone was moaning about stores like HMV killing high street shops. Now they're the ones being killed by online shopping.

The high street needs to adapt and that's what is happening. Ironically I think we'll end up with fewer chains and more indi shops, along with cafe's, restaurants and residential units. It may actually be quite nice. (Jobs losses aside obviously). But the world changes all the time. You can't fight it.