Lessons from the original dinosaur

EDITOR’S COMMENT Nobody wants to see some 25,000 jobs put at risk. Particularly not when unemployment figures are set to be worryingly high for a long time yet. But I know I won’t be alone in saying goodbye and good riddance to Philip Green. He won’t be destitute. He’ll be just fine. He probably won’t even lose too much sleep over the carnage he’s left behind. But he will have no reputation – apart from being a classic example of how transformation, adaptation and a little humility is vital if you want to survive long-term. If you want to survive in a world of technological advancement and in a world where how you behave, what you stand for and the actions you take are paramount, you have to be able to change. The belief that “I know best” is nonsense, believe me. Green (pictured), aka PG or the Emperor, was the original dinosaur. He was an analogue man in a digital world. A man who used to gloat that it was all about retailing, not technology. A man who may have been “king of the high street” in those analogue days, but now is not even a shopkeeper. Shops don’t need keeping. Customers do. And you keep them by understanding them. Understanding what makes them want to shop, how they want to shop, what brand means to them. What you mean to them. The real king – or lord – of the high street is Lord Wolfson. Next has not been left unscathed by the shutdown of much of the UK during these Covid times, but it has not been ruined. It had its omnichannel approach to retail right before the writing was on the wall. Its online sales accounted for more than half of its turnover before the pandemic and have only got stronger since. It knew that it had too many shops. It knew that out of town was a good place to be. Convenient and easy. Next plans for what’s next. It knows that retail isn’t dead. That hundreds of billions of pounds will still be spent on buying stuff. That we can’t help ourselves. We’re consumers by nature. Make it easy for us, make it fun, make it rewarding in some way – either through offering up a bargain (those Next sale queues!) or making us feel unique or like we are doing some good (there’s a reason I buy from Patagonia more than anywhere else). I wonder if PG really cared about what was next. The demise of BHS should have focused his mind. It should have made him see the writing on the wall. It should have allowed him to transform. But sadly for the thousands of people who will lose their jobs, it did not. Green once called the EG office to shout at a former editor that he knew the square root of F all (he was less polite than I am trying to be). It seems to me that it wasn’t EG that knew the square root of F all, but PG. There are tough times ahead. The banks are preparing for action on bad debt, reinstalling advisers they used during the global financial crisis and the festive period will not be jolly for all. But there is light at the end of the tunnel. A vaccine approval may start to bring us back together – it will certainly help fill some empty stores; and the pain on the high street may be drawing to a close. Those that had not got their retail equations right have fallen. The rest, if they haven’t got their answer, are at least doing the sums. And we all get points for showing our workings. To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@egi.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @estatesgazette Photo © Shutterstock