Reports of the death of the high street have been greatly exaggerated. Retail Darwinism will determine the stores of the future.

In case you have been totally oblivious to the efforts of the Retail Week team and their invitations for you to come along, this week sees Retail Week Live and almost all of the industry’s great and good will be in attendance.

The event starts on Wednesday and is preceded by a curtain-raising London store tour, led by your humble correspondent, on Tuesday.

There can rarely have been a more pivotal moment to come along. Brexit notwithstanding, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your point of view, there are the matters of big stores getting bigger, online merchants hopping the digital divide and the development of the in-store experience all up for consideration.

Or put another way, the store remains the star.

Amazon has its pilot bookshop in Seattle, Google has space in the Currys PC World Carphone Warehouse three-in-one branch on London’s Tottenham Court Road, and H&M is poised to open its biggest UK store yet in Covent Garden this autumn, among other things.

The refurbishment of Uniqlo's flagship store on Oxford Street has dented Uniqlo Europe's third quarter profits

Uniqlo

Uniqlo reopens its flagship store on London’s Oxford Street later this week

Oh yes, and this Friday Uniqlo finally reopens its flagship store at 311 Oxford Street, just over a year since it closed its doors for refurbishment and expansion.

The Uniqlo saga is a long-running one and it really will be interesting to see just how much of a difference has been made and to understand what a year of store refreshment and remodelling will actually look like.

It has to be special when the cost of losing a year’s turnover and paying rent for the space is added together and if the New York and Shanghai shops are anything to go by, it may well be.

Shifting roles

There are in short, any number of reasons to think about the physical store and what it means to the modern shopper.

Are these places where the simple acquisition of stuff is the main event or are they morphing into something else? And do fewer, but bigger stores equate to a better deal for the consumer, one that will keep them coming back for more?

On current evidence, as online giants look at the high street and suddenly seem to want a piece of it, the answer is that the notion of what a store is about is certainly shifting.

Some have said that shops are doomed. There is every reason, however, to suppose that shops will not disappear, but rather that their reason for existence will alter, abetted by extraordinary external influences.

Those who make it to Retail Week Live will have and much to talk about.