Why try to resurrect the corpse of the high street?

In Tuesday’s paper there were two stories on the front page. One posed the question, ‘ALLSHOPS TO OPEN ON SUNDAYS?’ and the other said ’20 JOBS TO GO AT JE’.

The first related to a suggestion from Economic Development department that the big guys, B&Q, department stores and garden centres, finally be allowed to throw open their doors on the day of rest and allow Islanders to enjoy the seven-day shopping bonanza that is enjoyed by many other jurisdictions.

(Personally, I can’t think of anything worse than being able to go into a garden centre on a Sunday. I may not like his alleged policies on pork, homosexuals and marriage but I’m definitely siding with Jesus on this one.) There was also a suggestion that parking in town could be made free to encourage more shoppers into St Helier to part with their cash.

The second story explained the sad news that 20 staff at The Powerhouse, Jersey Electricity’s electronics shop, were facing redundancy, with the company blaming the move on difficult trading in the poor economic climate (is there anything we can’t blame on the economic climate?) and increased internet shopping.

Once again, I’m puzzled as to why we are so desperately trying to resurrect the corpse of high street shopping. At the moment it lies lifeless in a dark, forgotten alleyway, boarded-up shops looming over it on either side, as a huge, angry being known only as ‘the internet’ stands over it menacingly, growling in a powerful voice: ‘Stay down! This is my town now.’ ‘

Because it wouldn’t matter if shops were open for 24 hours a day or if parking was free at all times – most shoppers would still use online sites like Amazon for the majority of their purchases for two very simple reasons. It is cheaper and easier.

And you can’t argue with that. In what scenario would you ever opt for something that was more expensive and more troublesome?

But Economic Development Minister Alan Maclean and his mob keep coming up with new ways to try to entice us back to our pre-internet ways, like a jaded salesman living off his reputation.

‘Hey, remember this?’ they seem to be saying.

‘It used to take you 45 minutes to by some replacement bags for your vacuum cleaner – not 30 seconds. Don’t you miss it? Didn’t you enjoy searching for a parking space, putting up scratch cards, wandering into three different shops to find the right size and then having to have a stilted conversation with a glum shop assistant who’s having just as much fun as you? Wasn’t it all so much fun.

No, it wasn’t. And we don’t miss it.

I’ll admit that in some ways we are poorer because of the shift. There are occasions in life when you experience wonderful, personalised customer service, when someone really goes out of their way to help you – something that you could never experience online.

But some businesses will adapt and survive because they will find a way of creating a shop that still relies on that type of customer service, that still makes you want to walk through their doors and engage with them as a business rather than just picking up an iPad and logging on. That could be the future – a redesigned shopping experience that revisits the humble experience of visiting the market.

Consider the compelling example of HMV’s demise. HMV was a market leader – the music and video shop that everyone would turn to first. When I was a student, the store would always be mobbed for a week after everyone received their rant checks, as we quickly used our fresh cash (which was intended to be used to keep us fed and in clean pants) to buy endless CDs of new indie bands and DVDs of art-house films that we hoped would impress girls if we ever figured out how to persuade them to come home with us.

Then things changed. More accurately, Play.com came along – the brainchild of local businessmen who predicted where the industry was going.

In an interview several years after Play.com had effectively replaced high street retailers, one of the company’s founders said that they had always expected HMV to launch an online business to rival them but that it just never came, much to their relief. This story is backed up by a disgruntled former board member of HMV, who said that he tried to warn his employers that the writing was on the wall but they just refused to listen, insisting that the internet was a fad and that their previously sound business model would endure. By the time they tried to change it was too late.

Change is the natural order of things. We used to buy everything in shops – now we don’t. We should not fight the change but instead find a way of embracing it.

I do the vast majority of my shopping online (apart from food) and at times I do feel guilty about not supporting local retailers. But I see the same problem in my profession. Newspapers were once the only place to learn about what was going on in the world. Now, we are faced with opposition from all corners of the internet and we are tasked with finding a way to preserve ourselves and to ensure that newspapers – in whatever format or medium – still exist in 20 years.

But it’s an exciting time. I am sure that people will always want access to professional journalism – as they will always want access to good shops, online or otherwise – and I’m looking forward to seeing how it all pans out.

It is impossible to know exactly how the high street will look in ten, 25 or 50 years but I do know one thing – we should be trying to predict the future, as Play.com did so successfully, rather than trying to inject life into something that flat-lined long, long ago.