Last week, I took a look at grocery stores in the UK and the USA. But they’re only part of the brick-and-mortar retail story. Both British and American shoppers have a range of choice of town and city centres – Main Streets in the USA, High Streets in the UK – and retail parks of all kinds remain a major draw.
The Internet has had a massively detrimental effect on physical stores in both America and Britain, but it’s still only a small part of the retail story. In the UK, internet retail still only accounts for 9% of total spend. That is, of course, not inconsiderable, and it’s also certainly not an equal-opportunities nine percent, having a disproportionately large effect on sales of books and DVDs and a rather smaller one on grocery. But it’s a sign that, despite shops facing very real and ongoing struggles, attending store locations remains a considerable habit.
High Streets remain the traditional form of “shopping” in Britain, but they are the branch that has succumbed the most to the rise of supermarkets, big business and online purchasing. Nary a day goes by without some commentary on their decline being issued – this past weekend, UK planning minister announced that the traditional UK high street is “dead” and that shops located in them could become homes in years to come. They’re an iconic part of the British cultural landscape, though, and Britons young and old cling to fond memories of them, even as many become more and more empty, post-recession.
The traditional British high street – our term for the main road running through a town or city, colloquialised into referring to the entire commerical and retail sector of such – comprised a number of independent stores, all situated within one small geographical area, home to a bakery, a butcher’s, a homeware store, a bookshop, and so on. Gradually, chain stores and big business swooped in, and the second half of the twentieth century saw most towns and cities dominated by recognisable corporations, but the high streets remained a considerable draw. They were – and are – the home of iconic newsagents and stationers WH Smith; pharmacists and beauty shops like Boots and Superdrug; clothing stores like Next, New Look and Burton’s.
WH Smith, a mainstay of the British high street. They sell magazines, newspapers, confectionrry, stationery, books and greetings cards.
The composition has changed considerably in the past decade or two, though. A typical British high street still comprises WH Smith, Boots, and Next. But it is also now home to catch-all discounters Wilkinsons and Poundland; coffee shops Starbucks and Costa; snack food chains national and international, like McDonalds, Burger King, and Gregg’s the Bakers; and dozens of charity shops (hospice/resale shop in the US). Banks, estate agents and cheap take-away locations occupy what was once valuable real estate. The high streets offer comparatively little when compared with the Internet, out-of-town retail parks, or even a supermarket, and the winds continue to blow in that direction. Even my old hometown, Frome, Somerset, renowned for its quaint architecture and independent spirit, has seen its most considerable draws dwindle down to one quirky, old-fashioned street (Cheap Street) and a town-centre Iceland and Subway.
Cheap Street. It’s ironic, y’see, because the things on sale here are actually pretty expensive.
A number of factors are at play here. Retail parks – or power centres – have drawn electronics retailers, pet stores, deep discount grocery and homeware shops out of the high streets. The Internet killed off a number of media retailers – MVC, ourprice, Virgin Megastores. Arguably the most considerable loss of all was Woolworths, a stalwart of British towns up and down the land for a century prior to its untimely 2008 death. Iconic for its childrens’ clothing ranges, pick’n’mix sweets, considerable media – CD, DVD – offerings and childrens’ toy selections, its 807 stores all closed in a two-week period in late ’08. In the place of these losses: charity shops. Coffee shops. Fast food outlets. Often, simply nothing.
The retail park thrives, though. An outdoor location traditionally featuring big box stores and fast-food restaurants, it’s picked up the high street’s slack, able to warehouse more goods at cheaper rates. Traditionally, electronic stores and fast-food restaurants dominate, but all sorts of shops can now be found in such locations: supermarkets and hypermarkets, furniture stores, foreign grocery shops, even cinemas and bowling locations at some combination leisure-retail parks. Argos, a UK high street store wherein you browse a catalogue, fill out a form and then have it allocated in a behind-closed-doors warehouse after paying, has seen considerable success in such locations, able to stock ranges rivalling the most considerable supermarkets. (Maintaining the concept in cramped, expensive high streets has always been a tall order; post-web explosion, it seems an utterly fruitless venture indeed.) They might look shabby and unappealing, but they’re convenient and they deliver on cost and convenience in a world where the high street increasingly doesn’t.
The retail park in Chilwell.
“Power centres”, as retail parks are called in the US, haven’t taken off in quite the same way (and cursory research reveals that even the terminology has seen far-from-universal uptake – most results are in fact for Canada.) Where they do exist, they tend to be more firmly centred around big-box and outlet stores, often lacking the diversity of the UK’s wide range of retail parks.
But what the UK gains in big ol’ corporation-domination “parks”, the US makes up for in malls. The UK’s never had quite the mall culture of the US, with the majority of such UK locations being on the smaller side, located in towns and cities as a mere component of the greater High Street experience. (They typically adjoin the High Street itself.) Still, they seem to be gaining ground in recent years, and they have had a tendency to remain rather busier – both business-wise and customer-wise – than their more general, outdoor High Street counterparts. (They’ve also tended to be where traditionally-hyper-American chains have finally begun to grow UK business: Baskin-Robbins and Krispy Kreme overwhelmingly focus on American-style malls for British locations.)
They’re still not quite the big deal they are in the US, though. There are 110,000 malls in the USA, which altogether account for half of all retail spend (around $2,300bn); by stark contrast, there are just 819 in the UK. Even considering that the USA has five times the population of the US, that’s a considerable – 3000% – disparity. 500,000 people are employed in UK shopping centres, around 0.8% of the country; in the US, that number is twelve million, or 4% of the country (9% of its workforce). Malls have also managed to retain a post-corporate cool and nostalgic mythology that even Britain’s shiniest retail parks can’t quite manage: Robin Sparkles was never going to sing “Let’s Go to the Power Center”, was she? In the USA, malls remain a retail force even more formidable, in both cachet and real dollar terms, than the Internet.
From How I Met Your Mother. Sadly, not an actual hit.
In fact, total retail sales from all sectors in 2011 in the USA – the latest year for which data is fully available – totalled $4,631bn, and the Internet accounted for just $202 billion. That’s only a 4.4% share, way down from the UK’s 9%, despite the US being rather more sprawling and – on paper – having more to gain from the convenience of Internet shopping.
However, the breadth of the US has, counter-intuitively, limited the prevelance of the Internet in some sectors. Online grocery shopping – an increasingly common occurence in Britain, and a service offered by the UK’s top three supermarkets – hasn’t really caught on in the US beyond Amazon.com bulk shipments of cupboard-stock goods. And the breadth of the country makes next-day shipping extraordinary and inordinately expensive in many circumstances, considerably reducing the convenience of the Internet when it comes to ordering goods you want immediately. (In the USA, Amazon Prime offers free two-day shipping, whereas in the UK, Amazon Prime is unlimited next-day delivery).
We don’t get the video-on-demand, though. Boohockey.
With the Internet accounting for a considerably smaller percentage of sales in the US, and retail parks frequently MIA, malls and shopping centres make up a whole lot of the slack. They certainly appear to have a brighter future than the UK high street, lucking out in a country yet to take full advantage of the Internet, and striking the appeal-convenience-cost common ground UK high streets and retail parks haven’t yet managed.
Join me next week for another go-round of the ol’ Box Office Prediction game; also look out for my upcoming look at how this fall’s TV premieres are likely to fare in Britain, and coverage of the summer’s biggest US corporate ad campaigns in the UK.
More from the week that was:
- ‘Twas a rather busy weekend for British cinemas, with seven films grossing over £1m. Notable for the purposes of this column: each and every one was American. Ignoring Wed/Thu previews (which do officially count toward UK opening weekends, ridiculous in my book) The Conjuring opened in first place with a stellar £2.2m. If the great word-of-mouth the US has seen is replicated, it’ll be the year’s biggest horror film. The Heat was also decently strong, with £2.5m including two days of previews; well ahead of McCarthy’s last opener here, Identity Thief, which disappointed with a £1.3m opening weekend back in March. The Smurfs 2 did far better on Wed/Thu previews than Fri/Sat/Sun oddly; with previews it was #1 with £3.2m, but without, it was #3, with £1.75m. It’s not on course to match the original here, especially given the hefty competition this summer. Red 2 was the weakest of the saturation openers, but it still just squeaked past £1m, which is down from the first by 40% but is still a fair result given the heavyweight competition.
- The top seven was completed by holdovers Despicable Me 2 (now on course to be the year’s biggest flick in the UK, unless Hobbit 2 pulls a December upset), Monsters University (which is exhibiting great holds to set itself on track for a total of around 6x its opening weekend), and The Wolverine (which is basically doing fine in a competitive market). Only God Forgives did well in more limited release too, roughly in line with Drive‘s opening weekend. The market is set to remain fraught with US product this weekend, as The Lone Ranger, Grown Ups 2 and Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters get pushed to multiplexes. Up against them is major UK release Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa, based on Steve Coogan’s brilliant character. More info at Charles Gant.
- Once Upon A Time took 711k on Sunday. The show’s declined from the 1m+ heights of S1, but it’s still a solid performer for Channel 5.
- The new Backstreet Boys album didn’t really set the UK charts alight, entering at 16. It did rather better in the US, making number 5. Affection for the American ’90s boy bands here has died off somewhat; it’s a contrast to the renewed, enduring popularity of UK hitmakers Take That. Heavy metal band Five Finger Death Punch enter at 21 with their latest, which is roughly in line with previous results. Kanye West‘s “Black Skinhead” is spending an impressive sixth week in the top 75 on the singles charts.
