FROM THE MALL TO THE ARMCHAIR
“Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.”
Armchair
Shopping By John Chalkley
No
this is not about shopping for armchairs although that’s what many consumers
are doing online. This is really about the way we’re choosing to spend our
money in this convenience age. Many advocates are out there right now
expounding “that retail stores are still king”. Most of us know better, and our
largest retailers today have recognized the huge importance of online shopping.
Online
or catalogue shopping, has been around a long time. It’s not a new phenomenon
in fact it started way back and has grown exponentially into what it is today
and will continue that way until there’s no longer a need for these large and
costly retail stores. Not so long ago in the days of the Wild West, they had no
retail stores available on their backdoors, instead they had catalogue shopping
(which is still going strong).Take for instance one of the UKs largest examples
of catalogue and online shopping, Argos. Argos started years ago, in those days
they were “Green Shield Stamps”, a retail reward program offered by some of the
UKs largest retailers. The retailers were all independent of each other, the
only common factor was they all gave away “green shield stamps” as a reward to
their customers and to create customer loyalty. Green shield stamps transformed
itself to become one of the UKs largest catalogue and online retailers, growing
larger than the retailers they used to serve. Today Argos is the preferred way
for consumers to buy what are top-line products at bargain prices, and if we
know anything about the savvy consumer we’re all looking for a bargain.
Now
everyone has got into the action with all of our major high street retailers
offering an online alternative to buying in their own stores. Why? Because they
recognize if they don’t develop this growing stream of business they will die.
I have often used the phrase “Change is
inevitable. Growth is optional.” And the same goes for any organization
that wants to stay alive. Our largest retailers continue to change and that
process will only serve the demise of their own retail stores, which truly are
fast becoming a thing of the past. More and more we are seeing a revolution in
the way customers shop. So what is the future for these major retailers and
what are they to do with the white elephants they call flagship stores and the
like?
Probably
there will be a reluctance to scale down their operations after all many of
their executives rely on this system to keep themselves in a job. Consider the
social effect of millions of people being cast on the scrapheap in an industry
that doesn’t want them anymore. Ironically it would mean less consumers for the
retailers themselves. But as we have witnessed before, profit is king, and
someone will break rank, some already have even the ones who still hold
onto their high profile locations recognize that the future is indeed eCommerce.
What
are they doing today? Take one of the US largest and most prestigious luxury
retailers Nordstrom’s. More and more of their customers are shopping online, so
why keep the stores open? Simple, I predict that one day they will transform into
the way that Argos find themselves today. They will use the slimmed down store
as picking up and dropping off points to make it easier for their shoppers.
People still have the need for “feely feely”. There is still a strong urge out
there with customers to sample what they are going to buy. But in a growing
number of cases they still go away and buy the product online. I can think of
many reasons why we do that, but never the less it’s happening today and it’s
happening at a faster pace.
So
yes there will still be employees, but fewer, maybe instead of waiting in the
store for the customers to come to them perhaps by implementing change, eCommerce will be used to get into their customer’s homes. There will always be
a need of course for those retailers that stick to their guns and want to offer
that in store shopping opportunity.
So
why did I use the title Armchair Shopping?
Years ago when I started a group to look at ways to develop what was then
the new shopping revolution. Our group sat around thinking of a name for the
company. After hours of debating what we should call ourselves, even with the
help of some very experienced techies (don’t ever get techies involved in
marketing) frustrated I said well what we are trying to do is allow customers
to shop from their armchairs, so how about armchair shopping? All agreed the
name was great in fact we even got the domain name. The techies of course
couldn’t figure out a way to make it happen. The company never got off the
ground, we had limited resources and we all went our separate ways.
Armchair
shopping is however still alive today, as I own the domain name
www.armchairshopping.co. Not what it started out to be, nevertheless it’s here
and the parent company www.anglo-america.com will continue to thrive in the future.
Well, do we need to keep
store fronts open?
What do you predict the
future holds for retail shopping?
John
Chalkley - Anglo-america
