They don't have to compete on range. One of the issues online is too much choice. In fact part of the point of a good department store is that it's fairly well targeted at a certain part of the market, so that things are to some extent pre-selected for you.
If your dimensions aren’t in proportion to the model used as the standard for clothes, though, none of it will fit you. I barely know a woman that doesn’t have this problem. The joy of online shopping isn’t so much the range of clothing, it’s the fact that you can often filter by measurements. If you have shorter legs than normal, you can identify clothes that have this leg measurement. Ditto waist or bust or hips or arms. This is the key reason that the kabbess buys her clothes online — until online shopping came along, the vast majority of her clothes shopping attempts ended without her getting what she wanted. And she isn’t even an unusual shape to look at.
I think men generally have it easier, but there too I have found that there are now online shops that will give you a range of options for things like thigh size (wide, medium, narrow) and shoulder width (well built, medium, slender). There’s no way that a physical store can do this — the combinatorics of it are impossible. I don‘t know how they can manage it online either but somehow they do.
I agree about the curation aspect of the stock. This is what drives me nuts about online shopping, and it is undoubtedly a key reason that I never buy clothes — I simply don’t know where to start. But if you‘re not a total nerd dweeb like me then I think most people seem to have a better idea how to look for things they like.
I know that online works for some people, but I think there are still plenty of people who like to buy certain things in person. Especially with clothes it's quite easy to choose a load of things that look ok on a computer screen but as soon as you see them in real life you know you don't like them. That judgement can be made instantly when looking through a rack in a shop. There's also an element of hassle with online shopping where you have to pack all the unwanted stuff up again, complete forms and so on, maybe even take it somewhere to send it off.
The kabbess says it is much, much easier to scan through things on a screen than in a shop. On a screen, you can quickly look through 50 garments and click next. To physically achieve the same volume of search that can be done in 5 minutes on a computer would take hours in real life. It helps that there are photos of people actually wearing the garments too, rather than needing to hold it up on a hanger and try to picture in your head how it will hang on you. And whatever hassle you have when buying online can be multiplied manifold by the hassle of having to go to the shop, look for things, ask if they have your size, queue up, carry the things home etc.
I’m sure there are indeed plenty of people who like to buy things in person, but this market is increasingly niche. It seems to me that the younger crowd shop via seeing product placements on social media with links about where to find them. The middle-aged crowd doesn’t have time for physical shopping and the high street doesn’t really cater to them. Maybe the older crowd still doesn’t trust online but this is a marketplace that isn’t going to last forever.
At the end of the day, there is a reason why shopping has massively shifted online. If the high street couldn’t compete while it was still vibrant and well-stocked with variety, I can’t see it fighting back now that it is hollowed out.
Electronics are different because decisions are more spec driven. I usually buy that kind of thing online and engage in excessive research before purchase but I do know people who prefer to go somewhere in person, talk to an assistant for advice on what they need, and buy somewhere "reliable" where they believe the warranty will be honoured and so on. John Lewis trades off this kind of thing of course.
Yes, some people do like this personal touch. There is an increasing disillusionment with the “reliable” chain stores, though, because to maintain viability, they’ve had to cut costs and that has meant a reduction in the “reliable” service. I’ve heard more and more people say that they’ll never use John Lewis again, for example, having had trouble making use of their supposed trouble-free returns. The last time I bought a TV in person was 10-20 years ago, from Dixons. It had a dead pixel but they wouldn’t take it back. That was the one advantage they had — a personal service — and they blew it. Furthermore, it only takes somebody to buy something online once to realise that there is more and better buying advice that way than in talking to the clueless 20 year-old in the shop. And that’s if they have the stock, which often they don’t.
Again, you have to look at the buying trends and think about what is going to change if that’s going to reverse. The less volume the high street has, the more it loses its very ability to compete. It’s getting worse for them, not better.
I haven’t been there since before the pandemic began. If I’m honest it’s because I’d find it too depressing. I went into Knightsbridge for a meeting over a year ago and it was a ghost town, but haven’t ventured up West since then and now I’ve left London. I think this is mostly an issue of unrealistically high rents from greedy landlords more than anything else, hence the boarded up units. If Philip Green hadn’t raided Arcadia (it was cash rich and owned many of the stores, before he cashed them in and rented them back) I reckon they’d have survived this. But the long term trend is to shop online instead, which I almost always do. I find retail overwhelming and tiring. Now I’ve moved up North I can plainly see the difference in cheap and expensive rents. Here in this town there are several small family businesses that thrive, little knitting and sewing shops, a plant shop, an independant diy store, plenty chip shops in some towns that have traded forever, despite opening only a few hours a week. Greedy landlords have ripped the heart out of London, it was exciting in the 90’s, I’m thinking of places like Kensington Market and the original Camden, now it’s all so dull and corporate.
