I spent the afternoon wandering around the pre-Christmas retail offerings of Zürich and I was surrounded by many, many shoppers. This is pleasing. I find the concept of the death of high street retail abhorrent and was delighted to see so many people out today, playing a part in the delay of any imminent demise.
I like to use my senses when I shop: sight, particularly touch, and smell most of all. I’ve also begun to realise that the experience of reading a physical book gives me higher content retention than its Kindle equivalent; perhaps it’s the ability to flick back and forth, or seeing the cover when I place it face down, or knowing how much I have left to go? None of these experiences is available to me when I read on my Kindle. As someone with over 1000 Kindle books in my collection already, I am not shy when it comes to reading that way. But I can feel myself being slowly drawn back to “real” books. And I am not alone. Physical book sales are booming again. The same sense pervades my online shopping: somehow being able to see and handle the merchandise before hand is so much more satisfying.
When, however, I read stories like Amazon taking 50% of Black Friday sales in the US or I see yet another boarded up store on a shopping street, I feel we are losing something. Andrew Tuck, writing in Monocle magazine’s Winter Weekly Edition 1 this week seems to agree. Talking about his experiences with his bank he says:
“More and more transactions happen without any meaningful interaction with the business concerned or a single word uttered. While this may be efficient, it loosens our ties to all of those brands and it’s only laziness that stops us from moving on.” This applies equally to the online experience of just about everything. Whilst Amazon may have started the trend that decimated the high street, some companies are starting to realise that shopping is social and, in my case, often tactile. Browsing online cannot give me either of these experiences. So something is missing.
The online only brand, Everlane, has sensed this may be true for their consumers (well, “sensed” after crunching the data…) and have just opened a real store in New York City. This is a “pivot” for an organisation that was purely online and had made the commentators comment.
This “temple to the brand” is a basic retail requirement to those of us who, although adopters of online shopping, still want the ability to smell and touch what we’re buying. The sheer number of visitors to Zürich’s Bahnhofstrasse today, filled with Christmas spirit (or glühwein) are a testament to that desire. The high street is far from dead.