Committed to the High Street

I do feel sad if high street retail continues to decline. Always been a fan, wouldn't like to see it go, but it is increasingly becoming inevitable. I understand now a bit more why. 


Now when you, the consumer want to obtain a good or a service, you need to pay. There’s money involved which you need to commit to obtaining the good/service you want. There’s also a duration between the moment you commit money, and the moment you acquire, more accurately, consume the good/service. That duration is critical.


People like to keep the duration as short as possible. Instant consumption. Or even better, consume first, pay later - like in an up-scale restaurant. For various reasons some goods/services have a long money commitment, like furniture, a house, a car, health care. Even if you don’t pay a full amount of cash upfront, you still need to commit to the whole amount at some point.


High Street retail only works if that commitment remains short, or at least cannot be offered shorter. Restaurants - home deliveries notwithstanding - have a place there. Luxury goods, jewelry, artwork too. (Because when was the last time you were comfortable with paying $25.000 for a watch you have only seen a picture of.) 


High Street retail doesn't work for entertainment media anymore, like music, movies and video games. The digital route is increasingly a more viable alternative to consume the good, opposed to traveling all the way up to the high street and picking it up in person. Even ordering via a website and having the media delivered is a better alternative nowadays. Strangely enough clothing is also heading this way.



Also the mindset of people is changing. Rather than pay-to-own, people realize that owning a good makes no sense if you don't actually get to USE it. Especially in rough economic conditions, people are more conscious what they actually spend time on. And owning something for the sake of owning increasingly becomes the luxury of only the rich and famous. So too will be the visit to High Street retail.

The Death of the Walking Encyclopedia

A close friend of mine is best described as the "walking encyclopedia". He knows the weirdest, most exotic facts, its history, its etymology, and related terms at any time of the day. Also he has the ability to tell all this in the most engaging, compelling way.

Strangely enough this friend of mine and I don't share direct interests. We walk in different social circles, have different hobbies, different ways of enjoying our free time. We were colleagues once and through these stories he tells, we remained friends.

With all this social media and ever-present digital connectivity going on I fear people of his ilk will soon no longer have a place in the community. We don't need a person in our circle to be a "walking encyclopedia". We have a smart phone for that now. And we care enough to share some esoteric facts, we just tag, snapshot, post a link on our twitter. In fact we don't need people to tell us in conversation where they've been and what they've done. I can look that up on foursquare, instagram or facebook.

Forget these old fashioned friendships now... we will find out soon enough we already make public 70% of our conversation topics, and the other 30% is either embarrassing, or plain old boring.