A shattering silence on this blog for the past couple of weeks because I’ve been up in Northumberland on holiday. There was a shattering silence there, too – in all sorts of ways.
While the rest of Britain was (I’m told) gripped by the riots frenzy there was a smashed window at a small police station somewhere near Sunderland and, er, that’s it.
I stayed in the middle of nowhere a few miles outside Alnwick. Beautiful rugged countryside, so dark only a couple of lights were visible in the distance at night, while the only noise was the distant hiss of tyres from a road up in the crags and the sheep being driven into a different field. Bliss.
It took me a few days to get used to the total absence of an internet connection and an intermittent mobile phone signal, though. But they were an early clue as to why this – and other parts of Britain - remain unspoilt.
The biggest clue was in Alnwick itself. It’s an attractive market town just off the A1 whose major draw is the Castle, where some of the exteriors for the Harry Potter movies were filmed. It’s also the only town of any size for miles around.
What struck me was how few national retail fascias there were on its main shopping streets. Yes, there was a WH Smith, a Boots, a Dorothy Perkins a Morrison supermarket and, outside the centre, a Sainsbury superstore.
But its main retail pitch was nearly all local – a butcher, a hardware store, a kitchenware and furniture business, an estate agency, the usual charity shops, a couple of pubs/bars, the odd local country clothing/fashion store, some gift/trinket shops. There is also Barter Books, which is a story in itself. A clone town it ain’t.
Is that a good or a bad thing, though?
Well, there’s been an ongoing debate about the loss of independent retailers and the dominance of national chains serving up the same flavour wherever you go. Indeed, a government-ordered review into this very subject is currently being carried out by Mary Portas, the former Harvey Nichols branding director who found fame as TV’s Mary Queen of Shops, advising independent retailers.
She’d find plenty to occupy herself in Alnwick. Some of the independents were excellent (notably the butcher, which does a damn fine pie). Some weren’t and they clearly lacked either turnover or imagination (or both).
What that translated into was that there was no compelling reason to go to Alnwick and shop for the sake of a browse and a casual purchase. The independents did not serve up the range or the consumer experience that national chains do.
I’m guessing that the national chains will tell you that the demographic data of a community as sparse as rural Northumberland simply doesn’t stack up for them. They’d ask you to hop in the car and drive down to Newcastle or hop on the train up to Edinburgh if you want the full-on shopping show.
Was my experience that of city people tragically hooked on shopping not knowing what to do? No – it was a story about the way the economy works. Major retailers need big catchments with a good wodge of money within a short drive. If it isn’t there they won’t come.
The independents who do set up shop would need to be very savvy to make good money – especially in a town like Alnwick, where tourism makes demand seasonal.
Yet they clearly survive, and there were few empty shop units that I could find.
Could the debate about independent shops learn something from a place like Alnwick? May be – but I’m not sure it’s an entirely optimistic message.
None of the independents were what I’d call indulgence shops. They were in the main places where you go because you need something. The only independent which you could really call a magnet – Barter Books, the book swap-shop housed in an old railway station – is unique, almost a national institution.
Alnwick’s independents survive because there is little competition. They are small-scale enterprises which didn’t look like they made a lot of money and they benefit from being in the only sizeable centre for miles around.
Tellingly, I suspect that the one Sainsbury store on the edge of the town employs more people than a dozen of the independents in the centre.
This isn’t an argument in favour of big retail – national chains are one-size-fits-all operations who have questions to answer about their treatment of supply chains and their regular failure to invest in great service.
But their absence doesn’t guarantee an alternative high street full of brilliantly run or endearingly quirky independents with a distinctive regional flavour. Some of the shops I saw were either utilitarian or just off the pace.
Good retailing is a mix of good products and great service coming together to provide value, and that doesn’t have to be the preserve of big national chains. But it would take a clever, committed and resourceful independent to meet those criteria.
Are they out there? I'm not sure. And the irony underneath this article is that it was drafted while sitting in Alnwick's newest retail arrival - Costa Coffee...
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