Defending the Independent Retailers

The following press release was published virtually in full in today's Surrey Advertiser!

Major retailers draw life out of village retailing – again

The first salvo in the pre-Christmas price war has been fired by Debenhams today, 17 November. With Christmas approaching the major High Street retailers will once again embark on cynical promotional campaigns effectively drawing the life-blood of custom away from village retailers.

Using headline pricing coupled with financial muscle, the major multiples are able to manipulate pricing to create headlines of UP TO 70% discount for 1 or 2 days only. This guerrilla tactic is enough to engage the national media in speculation about the state of the market or viability of the business in question, further enhancing their already massive press promotion. However, the effect on village shoppers is verging on electric. They leave the community in droves to find that the headline prices are on goods which have not sold well, with the discount diminishing in inverse proportion to the desirability of the item, until the most attractive goods may even be at a premium. In the meantime the ghost towns the shoppers have left are quietly closing down.

The reality is that, in Cranleigh at least, there are a number of shops with equally aggressive pricing and range but without the capacity for promotion. At PenFountain.com in Cranleigh High Street, their prices are consistently discounted by between 10% and 50% with similar stories at Easton Design, Manns, the department store and other village retailers. And yet, the local shoppers treat the offers with greater cynicism than those of the bigger players.

The facts remain. Village independents do not have the resources to promote their offers as effectively as the multiples and yet continue to offer excellent value for money. In the meantime, unable to communicate their offers by anything other than rudimentary window displays and local promotional campaigns, they are likely to be the last to enjoy the popularly predicted green shoots of recovery, in some cases, if it all.

Debenham’s decision has also attracted criticism from the world of fashion with specialist publications expressing the view that this may damage the independent fashion retailers in particular.


Further information:

Bob Melvin
PenFountain.com
202 High Street
Cranleigh
Surrey
GU6 8RL

Tel: 01483 278101