Does the High Street face an uncertain future?
Increasing pressure from online retailers has led to the forced closures of many high street stores over the past few years. Debenhams, BHS and Topshop are among some of the notable brands who have been forced to close their doors amid rapidly rising e-commerce sales. Recent figures from the Office for National Statistics show that in 2020 online sales accounted for 28% of all retail sales, a figure which has been steadily increasing since 2000. ln an age where everything is a click away, does the high street face an uncertain future?
Emma Crouch, a VM Coach overseeing 40 Poundland and Pep & Co stores, thinks customers favour the higher variety and convenience of online shopping in comparison to the high street.
“In terms of what [customers] want to buy, there’s no variety out there so they then go onto the internet where the variety is and they get [items] delivered to their doorstep,” she said.
“I do think there’s time to help the high street, but I don’t think it’ll be the shops that return,” she stated, “I think it’s coffee shops that are very popular at the moment.”
However, physical stores across the UK are also seeing lower footfall due to the rising costs of rent and employee wages. Research by Retail Economics states that these costs have risen by over 10% in the past few years.
“I don’t think there’s time unless they’re going to do something drastic with the rents and the rates.”
Many customers and high street retailers are still not in favour of shops converting to online, with some buyers still preferring the traditional in-person shopping experience.
“I’ve done online shopping with Amazon or the supermarket, but I don’t like to with clothing because you can’t try them on and sometimes it arrives and it’s not what you expected.” Said one high-street shopper
“I’m trying to shop locally and I’m making a big effort to do that,” Another customer said
High-street store closures have also led to thousands of job losses, with big names such as Marks and Spencer and Arcadia Group closing hundreds of their stores across the UK. Following its collapse in December 2020, Arcadia Group, which owned retailers such as Dorothy Perkins, Evans and Topman closed their 444 UK stores, leaving over 13,000 staff unemployed.
The covid-19 pandemic has had further detrimental effects on the stability of the high-street, with the online sales now standing at a high of 30% of all retail sales. With over 50 stores now disappearing from the high-street a day, many stores are now at breaking point in the run up to the Christmas season.