Why All the Little Shops?

Driving footfall into town centres and into independent shops has become an increasingly difficult task for town centre managers and owners alike since e-commerce online shopping. The web has brought us the luxury of shopping from the comfort of our own homes - and with consumer spending down and travel costs up, the situation is getting rapidly worse.

Even the Big Boys on the high street are battling each other in daily price wars finding it hard to move stock, even at rock-bottom prices, but they have big budgets and marketing teams to help support their lost revenue by utilising e-commerce and the web.

The little independent shops that feed consumers’ taste for the unique, non bland and branded products and services are getting lost in the fight and disappearing at the rate of 2,000 a year. Unless we can arrest the demise of all the little shops we could find ourselves in the situation of losing over 50,000 businesses nationally, as early as 2015.

There are of course massive benefits to e-commerce, many of The Multiples have subsidised their lower sales across their retail outlets via quality online e-commence strategies. This “Bricks and Clicks” strategy works - and All the Little Shops can offer the same concept – in the same way that The Multiples do – to the independent businesses in our towns across the UK for a small monthly fee - by sharing the software and development costs across...all the little shops!

Apart from the lack of footfall to our town centres that keeps local trade alive at grassroots, another great danger of people physically not going into the town centres is that there is less awareness of the value that small businesses provide – simply because they are not seen. According to the Federation of Small Businesses, more than 50% of the turnover of independent retailers goes to the local community - compared with just 5% from supermarkets. And, more alarmingly, 42% of English towns and villages no longer have a shop of any kind.

With the FSB’s Keep Trade Local campaign , AMT’s “Keeping our Towns Alive” and many other schemes many associations are tirelessly lobbying politicians at both local and national levels to save the independent retailers – but is anyone beginning to sit up and take notice. Some town centre initiatives are being helped by local and regional authorities –but until we see this in all towns it is very much down to us – town centre managers, independent retailers, positive groups trading organisation and measurable schemes such All the Little Shops to make it happen for ourselves – before it is too late.

If there was a Save the little Shops campaign in every town across the country the work of the FSB, AMT and others might be a little lighter. Independent retailers are at the heart of local economies and communities, providing jobs and, between them, giving us a range of choice that we will find nowhere else. Independent retailers need, and deserve this support.

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