Festive decorations, the sweet sound of carols and familiar faces at every turn – there is no better time than Christmas to rediscover the joys of your local high street.
Retail consultant Graham Soult says the “magical atmosphere” of our high streets during the Christmas shopping season reminds consumers how important these spaces are. “You won’t get the joy and sparkle of a really well presented town centre by shopping on your smartphone,” he says.
Where you shop matters – and studies show that the British public still wants to shop locally. In a study by Visa, the high street came out as the preferred destination for shopping, with 33.5% of the vote.
Asked to what extent they agreed that the high street is a place where communities come together, 55.8% of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed. A huge 72.5% said that shopping on the high street made them somewhat happy or very happy.
“High streets are part of who we are and part of where we come from,” says Soult. “People have a real attachment to them. They reel off memories of going to the high street with their parents or their gran. High streets are a thread that runs through our lives – these are places rooted in their communities.”
High streets are also places that have faced challenges in recent years. But some continue to thrive: according to a 2018 study, Cambridge, Guildford, Bath, Chichester and Oxford have shown resilience over the past decade.
Edinburgh is one of the cities with a thriving high street
Analysts also cite Edinburgh, Lincoln, Bristol, Milton Keynes, Reading and Brighton as examples of high streets that are defying the doom by providing popular and profitable hubs for their communities.
Soult points to Stockton-on-Tees, where local authorities responded to a crisis by reinventing the town centre. As big chains began to shut their doors and vacancy rates rocketed, the council decorated the high street with fountains and sculptures. It also introduced new reasons to visit the high street, including markets, cycling races, and an annual cultural festival.
This made Stockton-on-Tees a “hotspot of really interesting activity,” says Soult. “If you want people off their smartphones, you need to make a place that they want to go to,” he adds. The investment and hard work paid off: by 2017, shop openings were outstripping closures and occupancy rates held strong at 82%.
Andrew Carter, chief executive of the independent research unit Centre for Cities, agrees that healthy high streets offer so much more than just retail space. “They are places where people interact and where networks are established,” he says. “They are where, as the urban activist Jane Jacobs put it, ‘the theatre of life can thrive’.”
To step into a more successful future, high streets may need to look back to the past. “If you look at high streets 150 to 200 years ago, they weren’t just homogenous retail centres but were places where you lived, worked, socialised, and accessed all kinds of services as well as shopping,” says Soult.
Stockton-on-Tees (top) introduced new reasons to visit the high street such as markets and an annual cultural festival
The need to move beyond copycat town centres paves the way for local independents playing an increasing role. Recent research from Which? found that independent stores are outperforming major retailers on UK high streets. Soult points to another success story: Chester-le-Street in County Durham, where the growing occupancy rate is “very much driven by independents”.
Backing this trend, Katherine Boult, part of the team that runs But Is It Art?, an independent gift shop in Reading town centre, is convinced that independents are the future of the high street. “We can’t have these homogenous spaces any more,” she says. “We can see it doesn’t work. Indies are everything that big chains aren’t. We make it personal.”
Vacancy rates in the Berkshire town are relatively low and the town centre is buzzing seven days a week. By supporting independent merchants like Boult’s, consumers can help to make their local high street more personal, and filled with friendly places.
“We know what our customers want and we know what they don’t want,” she says. “We can offer them flexibility and we can react quickly to the market. We’re quite zeitgeisty. For us, it’s all about engagement and being human. I think that comes across to the customer.”
Boult loves the extra buzz in the high street as people shop locally at Christmas. “We play music in the shop every day but at Christmas we really whack up the volume and sing along,” she smiles. “Doing your Christmas shopping in your local high street can bring up feelings of enormous nostalgia and excitement.”
So, whatever you will be buying this festive season, show your high street some love and buy local. As Soult says: “Sometimes people haven’t been to their high street for a while, but when they return, they are often surprised at how much good stuff there is.”
Show your high street some love
Why not seek out the personal touch with your Christmas shopping this year and join Visa in supporting local independent businesses across the country because #WhereYouShopMatters
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