I find it quite sad to witness how fast the High Street is declining these days. Abergavenny is a town which until today's visit seemed to be bucking the trend of ghost town. For the last four or 5 years we've pootled to Abergavenny or Monmouth for Christmas shopping. Lovely local shops, brilliant atmosphere, a few High Street chains but on every visit it felt vibrant, a million miles away from the crass shopping centres which specialise only in pile it high and sell it cheap business model. No interest in customer service, those Shopping Centres are like conveyor belts, footfall is dominant in these centrally heated hotspots. For footfall means profit.
And that's why I refuse to go to shopping centres. If other people wish to go that's fine, but for me I like small towns. Wander from shop to shop, chat to the owners, and while they may be slightly more expensive than buying in a Shopping Centre I know I'm helping a real life hard working person make a living. For me it's not all about money. But then as we know, the new threat to the high street is that Johnny come lately rise of the on-line buying process. That has really begun to trash our towns. It's been a slow progression, and there are other reasons, such as car park charges affecting visitor numbers, but this last year I've seen shop after shop close in places I go. Another town I have purchased from to my heart's content is Wells. For over 20 years I've gone there knowing that I can get whatever I'm after. This summer the high-street was awash with closed stores, stores I'd known for years, gone. Including the Co-Op. Those which remained open, either Closing Down or having a sale. Bath is the same, many shops in the main street are now empty and the big department store Jolly's is threatening to close.
It's about 3 months since I last visited Abergavenny and three shops I visited then have closed, the specialist chocolate shop, an excellent shoe shop, which had been trading for 50+ years and cafe we know. But that wasn't all, around 20 shops lay empty. Two years ago not one shop was empty. I popped into the department store, Nichols, they had a 20% Christmas Sale on. Why? Well for the same reason I'd heard all weekend, people come and browse, try things on, then go home and buy on-line because it's cheaper. Without the sale on I learned, people would not purchase in the shop. What I can't fathom however is why do that - the cost in personal time and fuel to get from home then to and from a shop never seems to be factored in to the price paid? I remember a friend of the family driving 200 miles each way to buy 'cheap' tyres in Chester - and when we questioned his sanity of driving from Tyneside just to buy 4 tyres, let alone the cost of getting there and back, he just didn't comprehend where we were coming from. For him it was 'getting a bargain' that counted.
Standing in the shop, you can see what you're buying and walk away with it. Do it on-line you spend hours on-line staring at a screen, then you have to be around for it to be delivered, you pay for the internet connection at home, often for the postage and well, the list goes on. At the Oakchurch Farm Shop, erstwhile dubbed the 'Harrods of Hereford' I had the same conversation in the shoe department on Saturday. They are no longer selling Ecco, Reiker, Timberland and a few other well known makes because "people come in, try the shoes on then go home and buy on-line ..... we're a family run business so we can't compete, therefore we'll go for lesser quality products and hope that works financially in the long run"
I'm no socialist, and I'm not a big shopper but I find this all so tragic - the race to the bottom caused by the internet. How cheap can we buy something is the mission statement of the modern society it seems. Not where has it come from ( mainly China ) or the fact products have travelled half way around the world at what cost? Maybe I'm in a tiny minority here but does society not want to be ethical and support local shops, local people real people trying to survive the onslaught of the multinationals and their shareholder greed for profit? Profit is needed in society, but these days it's just greed and people buy into it as long as they get a personal bargain.
That said I carried on in this lovely Welsh town - I like the Welsh. I did all my Christmas buying in two hours in Abergavenny and had an idea for something else unconnected to Christmas to help my parents. It's not just me - the young assistant in Marches where I received fabulous service and walked away with a number of purchases thanked me for my custom (after saying in the three years she's lived locally, Abergavenny has lost 30% of it's shops.) A smile, and a thank you is worth a fortune in my book.
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