The Future of the High Street Inside Story
Such a good conversation today with an old client of mine an entrepreneur and someone who I would call a friend. We discussed the future of the high street! I was super excited and my sound was a bit loud at times…
He designed Ed’s Easy Diner and has worked in retail design and also been involved with retail environments and design in general for many years!
As I said to him working with him and the team was really educational for me in the beginning of my career in marketing and in business. His expertise lies in running businesses and engaging customers to buy products through the best use of design.
Listen to the audio here, and please feel free to download it and share with your friends.
Eddie also knows a lot about business itself and how people buy particular products, naturally!
He recently designed a lot of different place identities for Network Rail, including the Graffiti arches underneath Waterloo called “Leake Street Arches“.
We discussed the local authorities and the pressures retailers are under to stay in business and the only way to get out of these financial pressures is to liquidate in some way to avoid paying over inflated rents.
The different buying habits and online retailing and companies like Asos are doing really well in European fashion retail. They engage the staff and are competing with Top Shop and they are not probably going to be able to compete.
Retail has been over expanded into because the money markets over invested, this is because they have expanded beyond the size of the market, demand drops off so all of a sudden you are left in a position.
We share many of our tips for landlords looking at things differently and some great marketing tips for business owners, marketing mangers and c-level executives to really make a difference to the bottom line.
Building communities is a crucial part of the success of retail and the future of the high street and in fact helping to combat the loneliness that young people feel.
Eddie visits a lot of co-working spaces around London and we discussed these spaces should enable networking that leads to revenue generation, some of these hot desks do assist people to make money no doubt, but in many cases we fail to see the point of them if people just sit there and look at their laptops…
We also discussed the ridiculous use of social media and how the future of the high street is not about social media usage but in fact about the human element of our species! Connecting!
Eddie explains about the future of the customer touch-points and how Deliveroo and Amazon are producing non branded equivalent products.
Brands want to be people, they develop an identity, build personality and become a brand; some forms of brand strategies align with characters and these character sets to do brand definition…
People as brands are more what we need to get back to and people need a reason to go out and talk to people, these points of commonality need to be looked at.
Wouldn’t it be great in the real world if we had local influential people in the local community who knew the local community and could organise events.
We could be using the high streets to really engage people, and local communities that are created to enable people to move away from loneliness…
Getting out there and talking to people is absolutely crucial in this world!
Eddie and I discussed the throwaway society and the fundamental problem with the UK high street and the valuations of the market and the problems with the pricing of retail space in the high street.
The essence is having a much more social, community focused high streets. The Future of the High Street Inside Story will evolve over the years but this video and audio contain some super exciting information, so please listen and comment below or message me.
I would be delighted to hear from you if you need some assistance with your business or career. Please do share this with your friends and business contacts if you think it will add value to their lives!
If you want to get hold of Eddie, here is a link to his LinkedIn profile :- Eddie McAtominey