Save our Shops - What Has Your Town Done?

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

The BID funding is based on the qualifying businesses and you can throw the net quite wide. The value of contribution is set by the (BID) organisers during.

Yes, salaries do come from the funding, but the management does not need to be full time.

If a council pulls away from their basic responsibilities and pass them over to the BID it indicates how supportive of local businesses they generally are. I believe these responsibilities are set out during the BID process, so true can't be changed post start.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

A few comments have mentioned that the chains have moved away and it does indicate the beginning of the end.

This is a stronger reasons for the local businesses, council etc to generally increase footfall and revenue generation opportunities.

The reason the chains leave is generally simply - high costs, low profits. Getting footfall up increases turnover potential.

Chain stores will generally let organisations know what they would need to achieve to put a branch back. Statistics and reporting are available that measures footfall and spending demographics. When these can show increases and a good trend, work can start to get the chains back.

 

[Paul FilmMaker]

One other thing. We filmed some local businesses and asked some local businesses what worked for them. It was for a film to find out what initiatives worked.

Surprisingly, two things worked really well. Firstly, awards. Businesses winning awards saw a noticeable uplift in sales. Secondly, connecting businesses. Businesses learned from other businesses and made more money,.

 

[WaveJumper]

I just throw this out there, we may wonder why some of the biggest names on the high streets have moved out of town over the last ten years or so. If you were sitting in the boardroom of say M&S , Next or Boots maybe you would be looking at your bottom line costs, ie the biggest rent & service charge to landlords and perhaps think what, if we were actually the landlord, what if we built our own units on our own land. And oh my we are such a pull we dont even need to be in town

Now look at the some of the property developers of out of town developments and you may wonder why you see so many of those well known stores ............ and now they even have free car parking, and of course all those overhead costs just swell around in their own coffers

 

[Shopclicks]

About 5 or 6 years ago, B&M submitted plans to council to build a new store on a vacant lot on the outskirts of our small town. The application was rejected on the grounds that it would have an adverse effect on the High Street traders,
Fast forward to 2 years ago, the Wilko store (our only major discount store besides the supermarkets), closed along with 20 other poorly performing Wilko's around the country.
The store sat empty for over a year.
Now we have a B&M. And nobody is complaining about a loss of trade.
Better 'any' trading business than an empty store.

 

[DontAsk]

It was 400 Wilko and they all closed. Some sites were sold to B&M.

The Range now stock "Wilko" products as their owner bought the brand.

 

[Craig3141]

It's almost sacrilege to mention this in the UK but study after study has shown that the way to revitalise the town centre and increase footfall is something like pedestrianisation,permeable traffic filtering,cycling and public transit infrastructure and reducing cars to disabled or short stay only and ideally eliminating through vehicular traffic.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Great Yarmouth did that at great expense and footfall still dropped down to virtually nothing, out of town shopping always has car park free and full

 

[DontAsk]

I haven't been back for few years but Thame had a large 3 (or 3?) hours free car park in the centre that was always busy. Good mix of independent and chain shops. It always seemed to be doing quite well.

 

[Craig3141]

Cambridge and Bedford did it and shops came back.