The Make Your Mark in the Mall competition gives budding retailers the chance to trade for free from what’s known as a ‘Retail Merchandising Unit’ (RMU) or what we might describe as a ‘stall’.

These stalls are situated in 20 shopping centres owned by The Mall around the UK.

If you have an existing business plan you want to put into practice or are already running a business, but want to test your products in a retail environment, this could be useful whether or not you end up winning.

The competition takes place in two stages.  Entrants must first submit a business plan.

The best will then be allocated an RMU and whoever achieves the most successful results in the eyes of judges including Apprentice winner Tim Campbell will walk away with a retail start-up pack which will include:

• six months free trading on an RMU;
• support from The Mall;
• free business banking from sponsors RBS and NatWest;
• a place on a retailing summer school run by the British Shops and Stores Association, and;
• £1,000 in cash.

If you want to take part, make sure you get your entry in before 15th February.

[Photo caption: .Martin. licenced from Flickr]

During November, the top 100 UK high street retailers attracted 22% more visitors to their websites than the top 100 online retailers.

The most recent table of top online retail outlets compiled by IMRG-HitWise also found that 30 of the top 50 spots were taken by big high street names.

Clearly the power of branding is playing its part in helping big retail names compete online.  Commenting on the gap developing between multi-channel retailers and online only etailers, Robin Goad of HitWise said:

Partly this is a result of their brand strength – consumers are obviously looking for cheaper prices in the current climate – but they are also turning to trusted brands that offer value for money in these uncertain times.

[Picture credit: garethjmsaunders licenced from Flickr]

Good weather during April (I didn’t notice, Ed) and the timing of Easter are also credited with the small apparent upswing in shoppers.

However, Jonathan Foster, retail analyst at accounts Ernst & Young, said:

Despite slightly higher shopper numbers than expected in April, the outlook remains gloomy for the retail sector. We’re not only seeing a record number of profit warnings (22 so far this year from the FTSE General Retailers Index), but an alarming number of retail companies are also falling into administration.

Data also released this week by the British Shops and Stores Association (bssa) revealed disappointing Easter trading among reatilers, down 0.2% during Q1 compared to the same period last year.

There seems nevertheless to be a polarisation of performance according to bssa figures. The best performing retailers (45% of the total) showing a rise in performance of 13.4%, while the remaining 55% saw an average percentage decrease of -11.4%.

This data suggests that rather than recession, perhaps there’ll simply be a shakeout on the high street as weaker players find less support from the credit cards of carefree shoppers.

[Picture thanks to: Dr Max]

Key measures announced by the CC aimed to improve retail competition in local areas and address relationships between supermarkets and their suppliers.  These included:

• a recommendation to include a competition test in planning decisions for supermarkets;
• action to prevent restrictive land agreements;
• a strengthened and extended Groceries Supply Code of Practice; and
• a recommendation to establish an independent Ombudsman to enforce the code.

With nearly 2,000 small shops going out of business each year according to a committee of MPs, the FSB believes that the two year CC investigation has failed to address sufficiently the impact of the large supermarkets on independent retailing.

Clive Davenport at the FSB said:

People up and down the country can see that we are losing our small shops, but this report does little to solve the problem. We are in danger of sleepwalking into the death of our high streets.

The British Shops and Stores Association also expressed its dismay at the CC’s report pointing out that the proposed planning competition test only applied to big stores over 1000sq metres.

Presumably the ‘local’ versions of the major retail chains would therefore continue to encroach on the high street.

The main thrust of the FSB’s initiative is a campaign to ‘Keep Trade Local’ in the face of what it perceives to be unfair planning laws, draconian parking restrictions in town centres and the breakdown of local economies.

Roger Culcheth, FSB local government chairman, says:

We believe local government in England could be doing much more to safeguard the future of small businesses. The local elections on May 1 offer a perfect opportunity for prospective councillors to demonstrate they are serious about the future of their local communities.

Drawing on research released a little while back by directline.com, Amenworld highlights that 61% of UK consumers were more likely to buy from a website of a ‘household name’ retailer rather than an e-commerce site without a presence on the high street.

The fact that consumers shop with brands they trust online or offline is no surprise.  That said small online retailers are able to build trust with customers in niche audiences very effectively online thanks to a whole range of tools including, blogging, newsletters, Facebook, forums, or even twitter. The world is a lot flatter and a lot fairer online.

The need for a campaign to support independent online retailers as if they were under threat, is therefore debatable.  After all even the directline.com survey would suggest a sizeable 39% of consumers are happy to shop online with independent e-commerce stores.

Big store vs little store scare stories aside, the Amenworld campaign offers free publicity, promotion, inbound links and more to those that join, so this may be worth having as long as it doesn’t matter where your site is hosted.

The most significant upward price pressure came from rises in gas and electricity prices, accentuated a little by changes to the way pricing in this sector is recorded.

Other small upward effects included rises in alcohol and tobacco prices as well as the cost of DVDs and other pre-recorded media.

Retail price inflation remained unchanged in February 2008 compared to the previous month at 4.1%.  This stability is largely attributed to a significant downward price pressure exerted by smaller increases in mortgage interest payments than a year ago.

According to the latest figures from Experian’s FootFall Index, the number of shopping visits declined year-on-year by 1.5%.  This is clearly becoming a trend as its the seventh consecutive month that such a fall has been recorded.

Commenting on the figures, Jonathan Foster at accountants Ernst and young said:

After a better than expected discount driven January, February’s poor figures underline the tough trading conditions for UK retailers. With little change in consumer sentiment in 2008, the sector outlook is gloomy, particularly for big ticket goods such as electricals and furniture – so we expect further profit warnings and casualties are inevitable

Looks like the consumer is no longer willing or able to prop up UK economic growth.

This represents an increase of 4.1% compared to the same period 12 months ago.  Surprising perhaps when one considers the apparently fragile state of the global economy.

It is likely that much of the growth recorded by the the ONS was stimulated by January sales on the high street.  Consumers clearly taking advantage of bargains while they still can!

The current CPI now stands at 2.2% compared to 2.1% in December 2007.  Other than the increase in petrol prices, food, particularly fruit, and furniture fell in price by less than the previous year, influencing the overall year-on-year rise.  The largest downward pressure came from clothing and footwear.

Clearly some elements of the high street were giving customers bigger bargains than others during the January sales.

The Retail Prices Index (RPI) rose a little to 4.1% in January from 4.0% in December.

But the polarisation between those reporting a successful final quarter of 2007 and those performing poorly is stark.  The average percentage value increase in sales for 51% reporting better performance than last year was 13.6%.  For those doing poorly average percentage value dropped by 11.1%.

Top performers were furniture, furnishings and gifts, glass, china and jewellery retailers.  Hardest hit were music, toys, books, music, computer and telecoms retailers – all perhaps feeling the squeeze from online retailers who had a bumper Christmas.

Looking forward into 2008, John Dean, chief executive of bssa, sees just 50% of small retailer in optimistic mood and commented:

This optimism, whilst encouraging, is not across the board and needs careful nurturing if it is not to be dampened by a faltering economy.  The results reinforce our call for a drop in interest rates to encourage consumer spending and to kick start the economy again.

The seasonally adjusted index for retail sales grew by just 0.4% during the three months to December 2007 compared to the previous three month period.  Between November and December, however, the volume of sales fell by 0.4%.

A separate study released yesterday by Experian revealed that only a couple of weeks into the January sales its Retail Footfall Index had seen a week-on-week decrease of 4.4%.

What does all this really mean for the small business owner, particularly the small retailer.  Well, slowly but surely signs of a slow down are gathering.  But let’s just hope it’s just that – a slow down, not a recession. 

Here’s to some justified caution amongst small businesses and consumers during 2008.

According to Experian‘s Retail Footfall Index shopping on the high street during November 2007 was some 3% below what it was a year ago.  By comparison Hitwise’s tracking of shopping and classified sites during the same month reveals a massive 22.4% rise.

Martin Davis of Experian says:

Our research suggests that the relatively poor show on the high street is due to shifting channel choice rather than declines in spending.  Despite fragile financial markets, uncertainty about house prices and the likelihood of rising utility bills, consumer spending this Christmas is likely to exceed that of last year.

Brave words indeed.  It’ll be interesting to hear reports on shopping activity over the next couple of weeks from retailers both online and off. 

A report released today by the BSSA, entitled ‘Health of the High Street’, calls for a radical rethink on the way the Minimum Wage is applied, if the UK’s high streets are to continue to prosper.  Already butchers, fishmongers and green grocers have all but disappeared from many high streets.  But, argues the report, spiraling overheads and costs are making it very, very difficult for other independent retailers too.

John Dean, BSSA, chief executive, said:

Key findings within the Report highlight the fading heartbeat of the high street, casting serious doubts as to whether, without some form of intervention, it will be able to continue to play its vitally important socio-economic role within the community in the long term.

No denying it’s tough for retailers, but one suspects the Minimum Wage is not the prime suspect in the death of the high street.  Indeed reports by the Low Pay Commission gathering evidence from sources on both sides of the fence, such as the British Retail Consortium, the CBI and the TUC, suggests it has had relatively little negative impact. 

If you’re looking for the real murderers of the high street, you might be better off looking towards the supermarkets and our own changing shopping habits.

Across the UK 14% of retailers said they’d been robbed during the last year, with 12% saying they’d suffered physical assault and 20% saying they’d been threatened with a weapon.

The most dangerous place to be a retailer in the UK was the Midlands, where just over 40% said they’d been the victims of violent crime.

John Kirwan, editor of Independent Retail News, said:

This survey makes for disturbing reading. More retailers experienced violence than a year ago, more of it was related to alcohol and drugs, more retailers suffered stress and more retailers needed hospital treatment.

All in all these are shocking statistics which put the problems of many other types of small business into perspective.