Quote Originally Posted by rigger67 View Post
That's a bit harsh, mate.
I did 25 years in retail and have seen first-hand how the overall business has changed, been through three redundancies and enjoyed massive successes in smaller, independent traders.

I think in this case, what they've experienced is what's happening in book shops right now : they go in-store to browse and make their choices before ordering and buying online afterwards.
It's a phenomenon known as "showrooming", with people often taking photos of the things they want to buy while still in-store, in front of the staff asking them not to in some cases.

The exact thing started happening in the wet-suit industry a decade or so ago and many surf shops now charge people to try on in an effort to combat it.


I've got nothing against online as we live in a market economy and I buy online myself all the time, but this practise is despicable and only serves to show how utterly ignorant large swathes of the general public are if they can't see anything wrong in it.

But that was the first lesson I learnt in retail, of course ..
There is an issue here but it's not fair to blame the consumer. I've got a hefty mortgage to pay, bills, childcare costs, commute etc before I can treat the family to nice things and the odd holiday, and I owe it to them to spend as little as possible when I buy things. If it was just to subsidise the shop rent and staff pay in return for customer service and a bit of decency on my part, the difference wouldn't be so great and I could afford to do it. However the price difference is so big due to ridiculous high street business rates compared to out of town warehouses, and the fact that online retailers can build a business model around transferring profits to low tax jurisdictions via inter company loans. The first problem is in the hands of our government. The second requires international co-operation. Sadly there are too many fingers in too many pies to get the latter issue sorted, and similarly, to a lesser extent, the former. If they did, we could get our high streets thriving again.

Sent from my BLN-L21 using Tapatalk