The Rise & Fall of the Local Shop

What is your view of the position of the local shop? There is currently a real drive in the media to ‘Keep it local’, we all want our town centres to be vibrant and full of life, and we all value to importance of convenient shops local to us when we want to pop out and buy the odds and ends we don’t pick up on our trip to the supermarket. We all say that we value the local independent shops and bemoan the takeover of our high streets by the big chains.

But, in honesty, how many of us actually use our local shops regularly? I admit to being as much at fault as anyone – I have had my shop for almost a year and today was the first time that I went next door to the greengrocers to buy the vegetables I needed for tea. Like everyone else I value the convenience of the supermarket , the megastore at which I can conveniently park and pick up almost everything I could possibly want at a ‘bargain’ price. Like most people I am happy with the anonymity and lack of knowledge of the staff most of the time as I just want to get in, buy what I want and get out. The meteoric rise of the supermarket is no surprise and, in my opinion, is quite justified.

However, what about when we do need speciality products, or we need to pick up the vegetables we forgot to get at Tesco’s or we really need advice on what it is we need to buy? None of these things are available from the High Street chains, and if we are not careful they will be disappearing from our local shopping centres too. Not only is our convenience at risk but so is the heart of our local communities. Imagine for one second, Shoreham or Stenying town centres without the small independent shops or Ham Road in Worthing without it’s chemist and Co-op, or a shop- free Lancing. We think it will never happen, but in the States this is exactly what has happened – one Walmart per town, and that is where you buy everything, that is the reality in many American towns. Is that what we want? Really?

A customer of mine passed on a few words of wisdom from a colleague of mine in the local Shoreham greengrocers, if everyone in Shoreham spent just £1 a month in each of the local shops (of which there are not that many), the security of the local businesses would be assured. If fact each shop would take £19000 a month – unbelievable! Even spending just £1 a year would give these businesses are real fighting chance of survival through the recession and ensure the existence of the local town centres that we all say that we love and support. Otherwise, and this is unfortunately true, many of these businesses will not be coming through the current financial crisis and will be lost forever.