It's easy to live in a left-wing
bubble: between organic toiletries, pubs with locally-sourced food
and shopping on the internet, sometimes it is easy to forget there
are High Streets where a large number of people do the majority of
their consuming. A few days ago, my delicate shield of ethical
consumption was smashed when I spent a few hours inside the Westfield
Shopping Centre near Shepherd's Bush, west London.
The phrase 'fish out of water' does not
cover the experience that I went through. I assumed that Westfield
employed people specifically to keep dirty lefties like me out of
their palace of consumption. Much to my surprise, I was welcomed in
and dazzled with the bright lights and the range of shiny baubles
available for me to purchase. I had some time to waste, and decided
to find a music shop to pass the time in. I briefly considered
unraveling a thread from my shirt and attaching it to the door so
that I could find my way back later, but then I noticed the handy
maps available from an information stand. Armed with a plan of the
place, and mentally comparing myself to Livingstone, I set out to
explore this strange and unfamiliar land of retail.
As I walked past the juice stands and
Sky TV sign up booths, two things become almost immediately apparent
to me: firstly, that there were no music, DVD, books or games shops
anywhere to be seen, and secondly that the shops which did make up
the Westfield were almost exclusively either clothing or jewelry
shops. This confused me, for surely the main point behind a
large-scale retail development is to get as much diversity of shops
into as small a place as possible, thus allowing consumers to satisfy
all their needs at once. Apparently not, as the Westfield caters to a
very small section of consumption, mainly high-end up-market
deeply personal. For those who shop in the Westfield, the particular
boutique they frequent is a statement about their individuality made
through mass consumption, the triumph of late-stage capitalism. In
short, I discovered that the Westfield is the last bastion of the
high-end High Street retailers against the advancing tide of internet
shopping.
Later in a gastro-pub serving organic,
locally-sourced pies, I was firmly back in my element and discussing
my afternoon with a friend. I said that clothes and jewelry were one
of the few areas where internet shopping and has had little impact.
My friend informed me that he purchases T-shirts and shoes online, to
which I agreed. The internet's particular brand of culture is very
suited to the T-shirt business and allows the consumer to seek out
designs which speak to them. Here the internet has had success in
breaking the High Street's stranglehold on fashion. I asked my
friend, however, if he would consider buying trousers online and we
both agreed the idea seemed somewhat perverse.
The internet has taken over from the
High Street in areas where it does best: bulk selling of goods,
mainly entrainment goods, where the major factors are price and
range. The last time I went into HMV to purchase a DVD, a friend told
me not to bother and that it would be 'cheaper online'. He did not
specify a website or have any data to justify his claim, which was
built on a cultural understanding that this variety of shopping is
simply better on the internet.
So where does this leave the High
Street, other than with pound shops and clothing outlets? Some things
have to be brought in the flesh, and the time delay involved in
internet shopping means some goods will always be purchased in
meat-space. However, with the rise in smart phones, tablets and app
stores, immediate entertainment purchases online are a reality. All
that is needed is a shift in social conventions, to make the giving
of online content an acceptable present, and there will be no need at
all for High Street entertainment retailers.
The High Street is certainly in a bad
state, and a simple Google search for 'the end of the high street'
returns thousands of blog posts and broadsheet articles bemoaning the
end of face-to-face retail and making lazy observations comparing the
closure of Game to the rise of Angry Birds. The truth is that this is
hardly a recent phenomenon. It was nearly two decades ago that
Amazon's diversification into VHS selling meant that Saturday
afternoons were no longer spent wandering into the city centre to buy
the latest Simpsons collection. One article I read claimed that 2012
was the year the High Street would end, as if most people had only
just discovered the internet. In fact, most High Street retailers
discovered the internet a long time ago and have also moved into
online shopping.
Most likely the current process will
simply continue. Places like the Westfield will hold their own in
certain sectors for a while, but eventually changes in technology and
social conventions will move our lives and consumption almost
entirely online. If the High Street does end, it will be slowly over
many decades, and not because everyone turned exclusively to online
shopping over one Christmas period. If the High Street does end, it
will not be with a bang but with a whimper, and one which is already
well underway.
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