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Getty Images / David Ryder / Stringer
Not content to beat the British main street, Amazon joins her. The first of the ephemeral stores planned by the online shopping giant opened in Manchester on June 3rd. It hosts more than 100 small businesses online.
Clicks and Mortar stores will provide online retailers with a point of sale to connect with shoppers, and could also provide a boost to mark the main streets. According to an badyst at the Local Data Company, about one in eight of the nearly 600,000 physical retail units in the UK is vacant, although it is down from the recent peak of 13.9% recorded early 2014.
The high number of vacancies is explained by a number of reasons, including austerity, which reduces the disposable income of the average buyer, but also a change in the way we make our purchases . Many of us navigate in physical stores, then at home and buy items online for less.
"If we look at history, job vacancies have declined over the past three years, although online growth has increased over the last three years," says Ronald Nyakairu of Local Data Company. Nevertheless, in 2018 nearly 50,000 stores were closed, including major brands such as Toys R Us and House of Fraser.
"It's a positive move," says Graham Soult, independent retail badyst. "If you look at the intersection between online retail and bricks-and-mortar retail, it's certainly not unusual for online businesses to want to grow in the physical space. This is a common trend. If Amazon can help to allow that, that's fine, but it's certainly not to say that this kind of thing does not happen everywhere. "
Initially, online retailers such as the Missguided women's fashion store opened physical stores, while the unusual Etsy retailer previously opened a number of ephemeral stores in Oxfordshire. This helps boost brand loyalty, says Soult. "There is often a great benefit to having a place where people can see, touch and interact with the products, meet the people who are behind these products and have the touch point of that brand. It's not as easy to create online in a truly engaging and joyful way as in the real world. "
No more than Clicks and Mortar The first step of Amazon in offline retail: the company plans to open 3,000 Amazon Go grocery stores, fully automated and unmanned supermarkets from here three years , while present at Whole Food stores in the United States and the United Kingdom. . "Amazon is slowly making its way into physical space for a while."
For companies participating in the test of the "pop-up shop" of Manchester, it's a bargain. Manchester-based Swifty Scooters is one of the first to be selected for the Clicks and Mortar test. The company has been in business since 2011, but its offline presence is an advantage, said Lauren Siddall, of the company. "When it comes to scooters, many of our customers want to know what the product looks like." The company offers customers access to its headquarters in Salford, but does not enjoy the benefits of personalization. "It's not in the main street, so we do not have traffic as you do in the city center. It is interesting to allow our brand to grow in different markets. "
We do not know yet if the idea will be developed – and could depend on the success of this first Manchester store. However, the circumstances that Amazon has activated at the moment in the physical street allow it to specifically participate in this test. "They're probably able to negotiate better rates than they would three years ago, when the high street was healthier," says Nyakiru. "It's very attractive at the moment because there are a lot of empty shops, a lot of space available and little demand. In the past, the owners were not interested in a six-month lease, they had been looking for three or five years. "
Amazon, destroyer of the main street, will he end up being his savior? The opinion is divided. "There are always interesting new freelancers coming forward and if we can help these companies succeed a little bit more and some of them grow in their own stores, that's the way to maintain the main street. Says Soult. But Nyakairu is more skeptical. "This is a first step, but there is still more to do in the context of a much larger market. If you think of the 50,000 stores closed last year and the addition of 10 Amazon, this is a small way to count the loss of stores on the main street. "
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