Mary Portas on retail: The future isn't the past

Mary Portas’ 55-page review into the future of Britain’s failing High Streets can be summed up in seven words: The future doesn’t lie in the past.

She begins her lengthy examination of traditional town centre retailing by gently pointing out that a key part of the problem is the failure of planners, retailers, landlords and even the public at large to face up to reality.
That reality is that supermarkets and shopping centres have thrived because they offered something which High Streets shaped by another era were always going to struggle with. The days when shoppers could park on the street and meander from shop-to-shop were dying as long ago as the 1960s and 1970s.
From the 1980s onwards, the writing has been on the wall: people leading increasingly busy lives have been looking for four key criteria from their retail experience – convenience, value, speed and an experience (as opposed to a simple transaction). Supermarkets, shopping centres and websites easily tick those boxes. High Streets don’t
Yet planning policies and councillors on planning committees have persisted in trying to preserve an economic model which fractured long ago. I’ve heard many a councillor say that they don’t want a big supermarket on their doorstep because of the damage it might do to local shops.
They should read this one paragraph from Mary Portas’ report:
“The phenomenal growth of online retailing, the rise of mobile retailing, the speed and sophistication of the major national and international retailers, the epic and immersive experiences offered by today’s new breed of shopping mall, combined with a crippling recession, have all conspired to change today’s retail landscape. New benchmarks have been forged against which our high streets are now being judged. New expectations have been created in terms of value, service, entertainment and experience against which the average high street has in many cases simply failed to deliver. These reasons alone conspire to create a new shopper mindset which cannot and should not be reversed.”
Or to put it more succinctly, shoppers have already left the High Street behind. A policy which seeks to preserve it in its current form is almost certain to prolong its suffering and delay its recovery.
Mary Portas may not be the first person to delve into the future of retailing, but councils would do well to pay particular attention to her investigation because it comes at a critical time – and there is an absolutely crucial difference in her approach.
Where others have carried out academic, economic and planning-based analyses, her report is that of a retailer and consumer. Where others focused on improving process, she started with a simple question: what do shoppers actually want?
They clearly don’t want the High Street to carry on trying to serve up a pale imitation of supermarkets or shopping centres. It therefore has to do something different.
What is that something different? Clues are beginning to emerge. It would be about a mix of uses which may still take in some conventional retail formats, but would also look at services which cannot be delivered online and work better locally, socially useful services (like council departments themselves), residential use, leisure and event-based use.
Councils do need to look long and hard at the continuing relevance some of their policies and consider whether they infact do more harm than good. Refusing a planning application for a particular type of shop because it involves a different use is barking mad if the property stays empty. And surrounding the car-borne consumer with parking restrictions, price rises and traffic wardens is an open invitation to go elsewhere. What value is there in a short-term hike in parking revenues when it contributes to the long-term decline in business rates?
The authorities who impact on the way our High Streets operate have got to take on board the scale of the change that has happened in retail and its whirlwind speed. Decades ago, shoppers used to trawl the shops and the streets physically looking for ‘bargains’. These days they go on discount websites, receive email alerts and, in some cases, wield smartphones capable of what’s known as Near Field Communication – so the store can ‘talk’ to them when they walk past.
Against that background, sitting in a council chamber and voting to block a supermarket development is like facing a tsunami with a bucket. Or telling consumers they should go back to a time when they had to spend more time looking for a limited variety of goods which cost more.
Your average independent small-town retailer cannot hope to compete with a global, technology-driven onslaught. Mary Portas’ point is that they shouldn’t even try – they should do something else.
That’s where the debate about the future of retailing in Nottingham’s town centres and high streets has to go next.