Low in the High Street

Let’s face facts - the high street isn’t what it used to be. What was once a wide array of independent shops selling things that you couldn’t buy anywhere else is now a wasteland of bargain stores selling cheap tat that nobody really needs or wants. Blackpool now has so many empty and boarded up shop units it looks like a post-nuclear-apocalyptic landscape (and thanks to the increase in spice users it even has zombies wandering around to complete the look).

Decades ago, small businesses like butchers, bakers and candlestick makers were threatened by the arrival of the first supermarkets. A few survived (candlestick makers seem to have fared the worst) and today those that remain serve a dwindling customer base of old people who didn't really want decimalisation, never mind supermarkets. Once that audience has gone, who knows what will happen to those last bastions of local fayre. But even younger generations have witnessed the collapse - record shops, electronics stores, computer game stores, and clothes stores for people under the age of 75 (ie not Javids) are almost extinct, killed off by chains or online shopping.

But now, even chains are struggling to survive on the high street. Last month saw the announcement that Blackpool is to lose its H&M store in Hounds Hill. M&S are closing their store in Fleetwood’s Freeport. Looking nationally, Debenhams announced that nationally the chain’s profits are down by 85% last year, and Carphone Warehouse say they are closing 92 stores across the country.

Some people would have you believe that the high street can be saved, and even that it is being saved by bargain shops. Better an open shop than a boarded up one, right? But these shops hardly fill the same shoes as the ones we have lost, selling tat at such a low price that people buy it on impulse, and isn’t cost-effective to complain about because it is worth less than the bus fare back into town. Councils will sell you the line that high streets full of bargain shops are “thriving” and that the businesses are “providing local jobs” but they would say that, because the alternative is to leave shops empty and not get any business rates from them, and the people that work in them (on minimum wage or close to it) aren’t bothering them for benefits. But is this what people really want? I can’t think of many things more depressing than spending an afternoon wandering around Poundland, Home Bargains and B&Ms. Except maybe working in them.

Another way that some people believe the high street can be saved is through sheer mindless optimism. People nostalgic for the way the high street used to be often convince themselves that if they open a “proper” business selling “proper” stuff and doing it “properly” that customers will flock to them, desperate to get away from the evil corporate world. It doesn’t faze these people to see that national chains with hordes of accountants and marketing people can’t stop their empires collapsing – they just keep chanting their mantra if we open it, they will come. But look around Cleveleys and Blackpool and you will see that businesses have opened and people haven’t come. I want to say how sad it is that businesses like this fail at the first hurdle, but don’t these people do their market research before ploughing their life-savings into a vanity project?

I feel terrible saying this, because no matter how cynical we can be at Cleveleys News, the fact is we do love this little town with all its quirks. We really don’t want to see businesses fail and people lose their livelihoods. But when you see a new business open up in a premises where nearly half a dozen almost identical businesses have previously failed to make a go of it, and they’ve clearly spent some dosh doing up the place yet they look 95% empty 95% of the time, you can’t help thinking they won’t be here by Christmas.

Worse still, these blind optimists without any business acumen are often egged on by various “groups” who purport to support local businesses. Such groups are often (a) creaming money off the local council who have better things to do than support local businesses and are happy to farm it out to the first weirdos that offer; and, (b) constantly trying to cream money off the local businesses they claim to support for things like prize draws or charity funds with the promise that these will bring more business to the town and to their stores, but first has to go through their limited company where expenses are subtracted for themselves.

Sorry to be the bringer of bad news, but nostalgia doesn’t save businesses. Nostalgia isn’t even a robust business model in itself. Remember Past Times? A shop that sold nothing but nostalgia and went into administration in 2012. Bargain shops won’t save the high street either, they are killing it. Nor will a local business support group, no matter how much bunting they promise to put up.

If you want to run your own business, you have to do your research. You are going to be competing with online businesses who don’t need an expensive shop front on the high street to exist, so don’t assume that being visible will get you business. Just as an example, the former Boots Opticians premises in Cleveleys are currently available to rent for £29,000 a year. If you fancy running a business from there you'll need to make (not just take) £2000 a month just to pay the rent on a premises like that, which will probably mean having to sell things for more than they can be sold on the internet. And when most people have the internet in their pocket these days, they just aren’t going to pay high street prices on impulse. They will more likely just stand in your premises for free, browsing for things that they will later buy online for less.

What about food service, though? Everybody has to eat! And the abundance of cafes in Cleveleys surely means that there is room for healthy competition? One of the things you are competing with if you open a cafe in Cleveleys is the fact that several of them are owned by the same person. Cleveleys Kitchen, Cafe Marina, Cafe Renoir, and The Bake House, all facing each other on Victoria Road West, as well as Bispham Kitchen, Top Chippy and Cafe Royal on Redbank Road in Bispham are all run by Bispham & Cleveleys Kitchens LTD. Customers can choose the cafe they prefer the look of, and the same owners win every time. No expensive staff standing idle - they can just move staff to whichever is busiest. You can sit and watch staff coming and going between them. Maybe this is why we have seen the closure of Crest Cafe (one of Cleveleys’ oldest cafes!) and Sassy’s (the one above the health food shop that everyone remembers fondly but barely went to). Then there are the five different (and yet similar) restaurants and cafes that operated out of the premises where The Glasshouse now runs. Long may The Glasshouse prosper! But you have to wonder what went wrong five times before.

Sugar Sugar, Lime Lounge, West Coast Rock Cafe, Barista, Thyme - all closed.

Then there are the external factors that you just can’t plan for. You probably noticed a new tea room – Alice’s – was all set to open in Cleveleys recently. The premises were acquired, kitted out with a kitchen and tables, the sign was painted and fitted – and then it never opened. Cleveleys News understand that the building owner defaulted on payments sending the building into repossession. We also understand that the new owner was not prepared to license the building to be used for food service, forcing out the tenant who had just put their life savings into fitting it out as a coffee shop. All the fittings were ripped out and the lease has already passed to somebody else who has opened it as a cheap home furnishings store.

Sorry if it is your dream to stand behind the counter of your own shop, but for the most part the high street really is dead and new businesses are up against insurmountable odds. The best kind of business is one where the initial outlay is close to zero and there is next to no outlay unless there is income.

In a way, we at Cleveleys News are nostalgic for the past. We don’t want a future where everybody just sits at home buying everything online and never venturing out of the house. And there are plenty of great businesses around that make leaving the house worthwhile. All along our wonderful coast there are independent businesses serving great food, creating unique furniture, entertaining families, making incredible ice-cream. Our beaches are mainly beautiful, and free! There is lots to be enthusiastic and positive about in Cleveleys and the Fylde coast. And of course, there’s Cleveleys News. Some may call us cynical, but we just think of ourselves as realists, looking at our tiny slice of the world through wry eyes.

We salute all independent businesses who do provide something good in our community and take pride in their work. You make life in Cleveleys better. Plus, how bad can a place really be when there’s a service like Cleveleys News?