For occasionally better and usually worse, the impact that Jeremy Corbyn has made since his ascent to the summit of the Labour party proves a week remains a long time in politics.
But for a sustained pace of seismic change you would be hard pressed to beat retail, where the landscape has shifted once, twice and continues to do so.
Consider this: Starbucks, perhaps the poster child for physical expansion, opened its first store on the Tibetan Plateau last week. Closer to home the investment markets continue to shift: Glasgow’s St Enoch joined the £3.2bn of shopping centres on the market (p38). It could be valued at as much as £250m, a £60m premium on the £190m paid by owners Blackstone and Sovereign Land in 2013.
Even in areas where the direction of travel had appeared fixed, a reversal could be on the cards. Simon Roberts, president of Boots (the chemist), told delegates at this week’s BCSC conference in Manchester that his store investment programme was prioritising stores on high streets which, not so long ago, had appeared in terminal decline.
Meanwhile, data released on Thursday showed retail sales edged up in August after a weak couple of months. Intriguingly, online sales dipped in the month.
Verdion, rightly, sees online as a market that is maturing: indeed it expects virtual retail expenditure in the UK to grow by another 45% in the next five years.
As for the hoary old argument that online was unassailable in its battle with physical stores, that’s changing too. Click & collect, says Verdion, will outperform the overall online market, with expenditure growing by 78.8% between 2015 and 2020. The physical and the virtual appear to have a happy future together.
And discounters inflicting ever more pain on established players? Well, says Savills, there has been a 17% rise in the total store count for the aspirational sector.
Delegate after delegate at the conference said the pace of change these days was faster than in any other period they had experienced. It’s hard to argue.
Some politicians might say the same.
■ Agree? Disagree? Tell us what you think of the retail outlook in our latest REview poll, sponsored by Trowers and Hamlins: wordpress.egi.co.uk/news/egs-the-review-have-your-say.
■ Speaking of the BCSC conference this week felt like something of a homecoming. BCSC delegates are always more comfortable out of London, preferably in a big city like Birmingham, Liverpool or, their destination of choice, Manchester. It’s about the escape, the camaraderie and the city’s vibrant leisure offer.
All that was in evidence this week but the jollity masked a malaise: it is an organisation in danger of losing its sense of place, its relevance and its need.
Surprisingly – and perhaps refreshingly – it was all but acknowledged by new chief executive John Coyne in his opening remarks. The BCSC is consulting with members about its future direction, he said. The brand is up for grabs, he added. And, he promised, the upshot would not be simply a new lick of paint.
A new name, a new purpose and a new constituency are necessary and, it would seem, on the cards. Many other trade bodies have faced this crossroads. Times change and, as speakers said repeatedly this week, retail has changed at an astonishing pace in the past couple of years. A repointing, done right, is no admission of failure. It should be embraced and executed quickly and with confidence.
■ The death of Raymond Mould robs property of one of its shrewdest minds and most colourful characters. A lover of horse racing, Mould leaves a strong legacy. To borrow a phrase from one of those celebrating his life on page 40: “Raymond raised the bar.”
