Retailers must get the right multichannel mix of bricks and clicks, says Peter Williams.

Retailers must get the right multichannel mix of bricks and clicks, says Peter Williams.

Retailers are now realising the paradigm shift in the size of their store estate. Nearly every chain is trying to reduce the number of its outlets.

10 years ago, maturity for a national fashion retailer was about 250 to 300 stores. Now it’s 100 to 150 plus a transactional internet site. Not only is the economic change being forced by the arrival of the internet but, in current economic times, everyone is facing the reality that being tight on the number of stores is far more sensible than being generous. Retailers often used to show their prowess by the number of stores and square footage that they occupied – not any more.

What’s still not clear is how the behaviour of the consumer will finally pan out between bricks, clicks and multichannel. Plenty of experimentation is under way – Amazon with its lockers at One New Change, Tesco with the virtual supermarket in South Korea, House of Fraser’s collection store in Aberdeen. 

Virtually all of the bricks retailers now allow you to click-and-collect from their stores. Yet again the consumer is dictating how she or he wants to shop.

There is a genuine need for a place where people can collect parcels that is located either near their home or their place of work. It would be very convenient for this to be on a high street or near travel stations. 

This place used to be called the Post Office, but it is no longer located on the high street and, if you want to collect a parcel, it’s shut weekdays at 5pm, only open in the mornings on Saturday and closed all day Sunday – all fairly inconvenient from a customer’s point of view.

The absence of national retailers in many high streets has inevitably led to concerns about the future of some town centres and high streets. Without wishing to pre-empt the Mary Portas review, retail can play some part but cannot be the lone saviour. There simply isn’t the consumer demand for yet more shops and many centres will need to change use towards leisure and residential.

The shopping habits of my children’s generation are different from mine, in that they automatically look first on the internet before going to a shop.

However, they still want to go out. So the high streets and city centres do have a future, which is less reliant on mainstream retailing. Local authorities will need to take a lead, not just in planning terms but in trying to create a reason to visit city centres, creating public spaces using art and exhibitions to draw people in.

Like going to a buzzy restaurant, we want to know what everyone else is up to. We need quality spaces and places where people want to spend time relaxing, meeting their friends and enjoying themselves.

  • Peter Williams is chairman of Blacks and a non-executive director of Asos