h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Luckily, we work in a smallish office rather than a multi-building business.

I could do that, too - lots of my colleagues do. But then I'd have to transport the stuff home on my bike!

We have an agreement with some parcel services that they leave parcels in the shed at the back. With the other parcel services, our neighbours also take in deliveries for us if we are not there. I take them all little gifts at Christmas for this.

The old lady over the road always brings the parcels over when she sees that we're in. I keep telling her just to let us know it's there and we'll come and get it, but she still struggles over with huge boxes of stuff.

This makes us sound as though we're mail ordering and then imposing on the neighbours to hold our deliveries for us. It's not quite like that. The normal procedure would be for the parcel services to drop a note in the letter box and we could go and pick up the parcels, albeit at inconvenient times. But the lady over the road used to work for the Post Office and knows the delivery men, who drop in on her for a chat.

Apart from which, my husband is often home in the afternoons (German schools have lessons mainly in the mornings).

"People don't *like* the homegenisation of the high street, they *like* the cheap prices it used to mean."

These two things are functionally identical.

I'll allow that people may not be wholly in favour of homogeneity - but given a choice between expensive quirky individuality, and cheap homogeneity... the masses have voted. And it was a landslide in favour of more money in their pockets.

Also, prices are still cheap. Not as cheap as they were, but that's inflation. You can bet anything you like that an independent without the buying power of a big chain would be even MORE expensive, not least because they'd likely be paying the proper amount of tax...

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Read recently that Amazon may be about to introduce a new shopping concept - high st catalogues. You go into the "shop", look, touch and handle all the pretty things, ask questions of the staff then scan the barcode or QR code, pay for it and it's then delivered to your home. The "shop" then doesn't have to carry stock beyond the displays and makes savings that way.

Prediction: it won't work.

The space to store stock is not one of a retail space's large outlays. Its large outlays are wages for staff, rent, utilities and taxes.

This shop will still have to have some staff, if only to stop customers walking out with the display goods. It will occupy space which means it will have to pay rent, and it will require heating and lighting and possibly refrigeration (see footnote). And while Amazon can futz around and pretend that when I buy something from them I really do it in Ireland or wherever, if I'm standing in a shop in Wigan when I make the purchase they'll have a harder time convincing the taxman I didn't buy it in Wigan.


A large part of the reason why it's cost effective for supermarkets to open 24 hours a day despite the greatly reduced footfall is the fact that they're having to run the freezers anyway, so they might as well stay open. Running the level of refrigeration of an average Asda costs a fortune, and you can't switch it off overnight like you can with the lights and TVs in a branch of PCWorld, for instance. Plus most supermarkets were employing people 24/7 anyway to stack shelves - round the clock opening makes good financial sense.

Also, if I've decided that I want to go to the hassle of visiting a real-world shop, because I want to actually handle the product, why wouldn't I go to a normal shop where I can take the thing home with me, rather than adding in the extra complication of being available for the home delivery? There would have to be a significant price saving to make that worthwhile.

But, if a retail outlet can drastically reduce the size of premises it needs in order to sell the same amount of stock* (or sell a helluva lot more stock from the same premises), it can make significant savings in business rates. Also, instead of running fleets of lorries at their own expense delivering stock to stores, they can plug into their existing distribution system and deliver direct to the customer - and the customer will pay upfront for this.

The benefits to the consumer are clear - no staggering around with heavy bags, no need to plan public transport carefully with an eye to carrying stuff, no need to take a car into town either. Point & click in the High St!


*the secret of Argos' success

I don't think the benefits to the consumer are clear at all. What you're describing sounds like the current Amazon shopping experience - but with the added inconvenience that you go to a shop in the centre of town to do it, rather than do it from your sofa.

In terms of ease of use, it's adding an extra level of effort.

The bike shop I use most often (Evans) pretty much already does what swl describes. There's lots of fiddly bits that they can't hold in stock in all the shops - there is bewildering array of bits on bikes - so they offer to order it in-store and then deliver it to you. The benefit is that I can go in there, get advice off the staff, including the mechanics and make sure I get the right bits.
You can do this online with companies like Wiggle but you better know what you're doing...

I usually get my stuff delivered to the shop mind. Delivery to my house is actually most-inconvenient. Because I'm never in when they deliver it means I have to get a card, wait 24/48 hours and then go to the post-office. Much easier just to go 5 minutes down the road at lunchtime and get if from their shop.

That might work for a shop selling technical goods and who employ knowledgable staff. But Amazon? Firstly they sell everything from books to computers to saucepans. They couldn't employ experts in all of it. Secondly, I imagine they'd be employing students looking for a summer job and 16-year-olds on minimum wage.

Just been reminded of a couple of large 'catalogue' stores
which have a small front display area featuring a few examples
of various products but mainly being stand-up writing desks
with catalogues which the customer browses, noting the coded
number of any item they wish to examine. This is presented to
a clerk (take-a-number line-ups) who disappears into the back
warehouse section and returns with a fresh still boxed example
which is then opened and inspected by the customer who then
must decide if they wish to purchase and take away.

A large national garden/tool supplier (Lee Valley *) still operates
like this but the originators were the original mail-order catologue
retailers Sears, and in Canada, Eatons who had a catlogue counter
in all their retail big box stores for those who would rather not wait
for items via mail.

It seemed to me that this method worked especially well for clothing
items where the clerk could search and bring out the size requested,
perhaps in a couple of colour choices, for inspection. It saved the
customer the time of looking thru the racks for their proper size
while also saving the store-clerks from constantly maintaining the
displays of inventory in relatively attractive ways so they seem
unsoiled and undisturbed by the hands of the hoi-poloi who rifle
through the stocks careless of the affect they have on items they
have no intention of buying.


~jwf~

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Valley_Tools

"if a retail outlet can drastically reduce the size of premises it needs in order to sell the same amount of stock"

Observation - they wouldn't reduce the size of their premises. I have, in my time, worked for three high street electrical retailers, two of whom no longer appear on the high street.

When I worked for them (and it pains me to say this) twenty to twenty five years ago () the shops were:
- on the high street
- quite small
- the store was quite densely staffed - a half dozen sales assistants in an area the size of half a tennis court. There was always someone a few feet away to help, and always someone on the till.
- AT LEAST 50% of the floor space of the branch was not accessible to the public, as it was the store room

Consider what the electrical retailers of today look like:
- in out of town locations
- enormous
- sparsely staffed - the same half dozen staff in an area of two or three football pitches. I tried to buy a coffee machine the other day, and having had absolutely no help or interest from the shopfloor staff despite actively trying to attract their attention, eventually helped myself to one off the shelf and walked to the till... where I stood for a full minute before I eventually got bored and walked out of the shop carrying the product. I stood outside the shop for a full minute, then walked back in. I set the alarms off both times. I stood for ANOTHER half minute at the till before a fat person eventually lumbered over and deigned to take my money. It's like they were actively trying to lose my business.
- ALL stock is on the shop floor - there is no "back room" to speak of, or if there is, it's a tiny, tiny proportion of the total floorspace.

All they'd be able to do is, instead of stocking two or three or ten of each item, they'd stock just one and be able to offer a slightly wider range of stuff. But they'll never be able to compete with the online stores for range.

That'll be Currys then? (No longer at the BBC, we can speak our minds.

Incidentally, here's a wee piece about Amazon's thinking - http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/amazon-boss-mulls-high-street-shops-50009790/

This is already happening. People are already going into the high street shops, touching and feeling and trying on for size, and then going and ordering it online where it's cheaper.

High street stores are citing this as one of the main reasons for the demise of the high street and them all going out of business.

It looks more like Amazon are looking to get *all* that trade by giving the stores themselves a small cut of what they're already losing, and the customers get less guilt. Of course, it's also to try and get the online customers away from eBay and Play which themselves have also just become market places for smaller companies.