A Runt’s Rant: English Retail Sector; Y U MAKE NO SENSE?

I honestly was not feeling like ranting this week; I was even a bit worried that I had ran out of topics to rant about.

Well, apparently, I haven’t.

I was doing a 9-5 shift the other day and wanted to go out and do some shopping. So here I was, ready to spend some money (which rarely ever happens, mind you) and headed for the High Street Down Town (pretty funky, I know).

On my way there I thought about doing some general browsing and maybe get a new suit and a couple of new shirts, etc, etc.

You can imagine my frustration when I walked in the mall at 17:30 and was politely advised that it would be closing at 18:00.

Right. So I had about half an hour to go to Moss Bros, Debenhams, ZARA, TM Lewin, Austin Reed, John Lewis, M & S, TKMaxx and Primark (NOT). If I was to walk at about 15mph, I could have easily covered all of those AND I would had also had between two and five minutes to try on anything I liked.

‘Lovely.’, I thought. Except I didn’t. A thought slapped me in the face.

Before that day, I had never paid any attention to it but here it was now face- palming me every ten seconds or so.

The English Retail sector makes NO SENSE.

Again, let me rephrase that:

• A good 60% of all busybodies finish work at 17:00

• A good 50% of them have plans over the weekend and do not, thus, want to waste their time on shopping

• A good 65% of them would like to do some shopping after work

• A solid 100% of them are not able to do so because

MOST SHOPS SHUT AT 17:30

So we end up in a situation where you’ve got all those people wanting to buy stuff and no shops to buy the stuff from.

Outstanding. And what are the possible excuses for that?

1) People don’t spend as much nowadays and it is not economically viable to pay staff for an extra two to three hours of work

2) English people are used to shopping over the weekend

Well, re 1), people don’t spend as much because the shops are closed and they can’t. End of.

Re 2), firstly, that is only correct because shops are closed after 17:30. Also, you might be surprised to know that there’re lot of people in England who are not English and who are used to shopping in the evening.

So, please, if you are a retailer reading this:

Think about it- the above makes sense. Make it possible for people to buy your stuff from you- stay open till 20:30 to give them some leeway.

P.S. NONE of the above seems to apply to London. What applies to London, though, must be applied to everything else in England.

After all, why should people in London be able to shop until late and those outside London limited to weekend shopping?

Ah well…

To Hell With It!