Retailers have provided a blizzard of updates throughout January on their Christmas trading performance.

The overall picture that emerged was one of squeezed consumer budgets, non-food losing out to food retailers, the importance of a measured strategy and a continued shift to online.

While retailers themselves wrestle with these fast-emerging trends in Britain’s most dynamic sector, how do property owners react?

For the real-estate world, Christmas is an exciting but potentially anxious time.

We love to see our shopping centres, retail parks and high streets prosper, and helping to generate high footfall is genuinely satisfying for all our teams.

But we also feel the tremors when a New Look or House of Fraser hits the headlines for the wrong reasons, fearing empty units at worst, or long, drawn-out negotiations over company voluntary arrangements as an agonising but sometimes necessary evil at this time of year.

“There are retailers who are stuck in the past, refusing to realise that the future lies in creating for themselves a vibrant, omnichannel shopping estate”

Mark Williams, Revo

Today though, I want to make a plea for retailers and landlords alike who are running away from the changes crystallised by Christmas 2017 to stop acting like King Canute.

For every Burberry, Hugo Boss and Fat Face that fared well over Christmas, there is a John Lewis and Marks & Spencer that is striving to re-invent itself.

But there are also retailers who are stuck in the past, refusing to realise that the future lies in creating for themselves a vibrant, omnichannel shopping estate.

The retailers who don’t understand this will wither and die and, to be frank, will soon not be welcomed by many property owners.

Across the real-estate world there is a growing and passionate belief that in-store and online sales success are completely intertwined.

The best landlords understand this and want to see the two formats complementing each other all day, every day.

They understand that the customer has always wanted their goods as soon as possible and online sales have only accelerated that need for speed.

“Historically, some landlords allowed shopping centres, retail parks and high streets to wither through under-investment”

Mark Williams, Revo

Online-only retailers understand this, but some traditional store-based businesses have been too slow to deliver a competing omnichannel offer.

That’s all very well, but what is the property world doing to help?

We also understand that, historically, some landlords allowed shopping centres, retail parks and high streets to wither through under-investment, insisting on long leases that frightened new entrants and lacking the imagination to think of vibrant alternative uses.

Under-investment remains an issue, particularly where trying to forecast a decent return on it is challenging, but the ‘do nothing’ route is not the answer either.

Changing Britain

Visit Britain’s town centres now, though, and you will see a rapidly changing picture.

At Revo, part of our mission is to help promote a revitalisation of Britain’s town and city centres by promoting a mix of retail, leisure, residential, educational and other uses so that we never see ghost towns emerging again.

Liverpool, which was dying a slow death in the 1990s and early 2000s, is now completely revitalised.

Bracknell, for many years the butt of comedians’ cruellest new-town jokes, has a vibrant town centre that opened last year.

And now Basildon, a classic 1960s new town, is reinventing itself through the expansion of educational, leisure and residential uses, and a cultural strategy that resonates with its catchment.

The property world by its nature cannot move as quickly as the retail world. Retailers can respond overnight to shopping trends, whereas the UK’s laborious planning process and the scale of investment required for major construction projects mean property can seem slow to react.

But landowners and developers are now stepping up to the mark, and are ready, willing and able to create the places that will help retailers to thrive.

There is too much shopping space in Britain right now, but when re-booted and re-invigorated, there can still be a strong future for retail property.

  • Mark Williams is president of retail property body, Revo