Brrr it's cold outside and I haven't been able to venture terribly far what with all this snow, ice and what not but who cares as I see plenty enjoying the winter that is probably more than our Prime Minister is at the minute.
Whats happened in the last week or so is the retailer HMV who had gone into administration seems to be be in the process of being bought out by Hilton's who bought the Canadian stores a few years back and there's a willingness on the part of suppliers such as the music companies to lower wholesale prices and the terms of supplying goods to give the ol' dog some bite as they see an advantage in having their products on the high street (and not just a few titles in Asda and Tesco's).
That's good but I still feel 200+ stores is just not sensible in the current market all coming with their individual rent which is a large part of the problem in being a physical high street retailer in the UK. Indeed in passing I'll mention as of the end of this month the Disney store locally in a 350,000 population catchment of the North-west Midlands is closing because the mall rents are too high for them, which I think gives you an indication of the scale of the rent issue - and it needs action.
I feel they need to make better use of having an internet store - currently closed - allowing customers to order directly from a central large catalogue and allow them to nominate a store for picking up bulky or otherwise hard to deliver items in the metropolitan districts.
It also would help the stores by meaning they wouldn't have to keep very large stocks and if each store also had wifi, you could whip out your tablet, order a title and collect when convenient just by yourself. That may help staffing costs too.
Bigger stores may benefit by having a coffee store and maybe used vinyl store concession being allowed operate from the store to make the most of being the music store of a area which would help smaller store get more exposure without the expensive of a prime location. You see concessions in many 'womens' stores so why not try it???
The Prime Minister bit: spare you the details but he's wanting to reform the EU first and put that in a upcoming Tory government bill on a referendum as the yes option.
I really don't feel whatever the merits (and there are many) of reforming the EU, it's a proverbial can of worms most European leaders want to open particularly if we're talking about renegotiation of terms. It seems to me he's trying to folk on side who'd defect to the anti EU membership political party, UKIP rather more than seriously believing it would work out.
1 comment:
On the store front, "Click and collect" could be a useful business strategy for many companies - especially as the majority of the population are at work during the day, so with conventional internet mail order, they have the dilemma of either having the stuff delivered to work, or heading to a central distribution depot somewhere to collect it. Click and Collect would allow them to pick up their goods from somewhere a bit closer to home.
On the EU front, given that both the reforms and the referendum are scheduled after the next election, plus the fact politicians are notoriously bad at following through with pre-election promises, like you I'm sure he has no intention of a referendum and it's a sop to the Eurosceptic wing of his party to discourage them (and their supporters) from jumping ship to UKIP.
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