A lot of the larger retailers are struggling at the moment with stores closing on the high street up and down the country.
The reason for this is clear, although most bricks and mortar shops are having to cope with reduced footfall most can just about cope for now, whereas larger stores with often crippling rents can quickly get into big trouble making the books balance.
We have found a number of our EPoS system customers are coping with these issues by making some of their stores into concessions within other retailers stores and premises.
This way the rent is contributed to by all parties involved and they also then share the task of getting people into the store. The mere fact that you can browse multiple retailers’ products within a single store is a draw in itself for shoppers.
These businesses may also be able to share staffing costs to an extent as well as other resources like point-of-sale advertising and EPoS Systems. They can also benefit from any hospitality concessions present in the premises, for example a cafe or coffee shop may help bring customers in and help to give them an experience that they cannot get while shopping online.
We can see this trend growing in the coming years and in fact in some circumstances it may be the only viable way to utilise some of the larger stores currently standing empty in our towns and cities. The chances of finding a single retailer willing to take on the risk and rent associated with a huge retail premises is remote but there surely can’t be a shortage of large retailers wanting to downsize or presently online only retailers wanting to have a real world presence.
Imagine what was once a large stuffy department store transformed into numerous small concessions, some well known names and others less well known enterprises that until then had maybe not even had a physical shop. Some permanently based there and some maybe just there on a seasonal or pop-up basis.