Anyway, I'm always eager to set the world to rights on here and elsewhere, but I'm clearly not so quick off the mark in my own personal life (it's much easier to be a backseat driver). So I'm now wondering if perhaps I need to stop chirping and start doing something productive. (My annoying chirps got me blocked by Piers Morgan on Twitter last night lmao ..I shared the picture of him in St. Tropez again. The one with Raheem Sterling. Y'know ..this one..
The mid-corona pandemic one. That one. That one where he has no mask on.)
My amusement aside though I think I'm probably spending far too much time on Twitter and other platforms niggling people like this. Perhaps it might help get us all out of lock down a teeny bit quicker, but it's hardly a plan for the future. So I'm trying to think a bit more long term.
I was pondering my living space / creative space ideas again. Which I've mentioned many times on here before. It struck me that instead of just writing about them perhaps I should try to somehow put them into practice. Difficult though that would be. Can they be actualised in a business sense? And by someone like me?
The obvious and simple answer to that is no. lol. I'm very comfortable making myself busy typing up blogs and making music and such like, but proper business. Meeting people, wearing a suit, actually doing stuff out in the real world, that type of business. That's not something I could ever really be good at. Not by a long way. I just don't have it in me.
Perhaps it's because I'm too shy and awkward. Maybe I'm just too much of a layabout. Either way it's highly unlikely I'll ever actually step forward and do anything truly entrepreneurial. Plus I'm far too poor. If I had a £1million war chest that would be one thing, but with barely £100 in my current account I think I'm going to struggle becoming the UK's next business mogul.
Still, it is something to think about though. Even if it only ever remains an exercise in thought.
It also reminded me of another idea I was thinking about which in some ways relates to this creative space notion.
The Hat Shop Lady.
I was thinking about shops. Particularly with regard to our empty highstreets. Just as an observer you see so many little shops and businesses open up, only to drop out of business six months later (and that's before the whole corona-postponer). It always occurs to me that many of these businesses simply aren't profitable enough to justify an entire shop to themselves.
I remember seeing a hat store opening up and thinking; "Yeah, there's no way they're selling enough hats in a small town like this to make a profit". It was a beautiful little store, and the lady running it had obviously put a huge amount of effort in, no doubt with the help of loans and grants. But it was doomed to fail. How many hats are you going to sell in such a small catchment area? Especially when you're competing with major retailers.
Witnessing many of these stores pop up and then disappear made me wonder if there was perhaps a more flexible way of doing things. The lady had some nice hats, but she didn't need an entire store.
So the idea hit upon me. We need a place where people can hire shop space, but for much shorter and neater periods. Literally just hours at a time. Much like hiring a rehearsal room at a music studio for a morning or a few hours.
So our lady selling hats could perhaps hire a stall or section of space for brief periods of time. Say a Monday morning. Or a Thursday afternoon. She could book this for a one off time, or perhaps for an extended period. Every Monday morning for three months let's say.
Of course, what I'm describing here is essentially a market stall. Though in this case one that would be indoors, in a nice modern space. With all the benefits of current digital technology.
We tend to look down our noses at market places, but in times gone by they would've been incredibly organic things. Flexibly moving (and expanding and contracting) to meet the demands of the local economy. This flexibility is all but gone in our modern over-regulated world though ..at least offline anyway. In fact, this lack of flexibility is in part why highstreets and city centres can't compete with online retailers.
If you want to sell something on the high street your only option is to open an entire store. How many new businesses or fledgling entrepreneurs need an entire shop 24/7? Surely it's much more natural to start selling a few things at first, then to build up over time.
So, if we return to the hat lady...
If she had the option of simply booking some space she wouldn't have had to go the whole hog and set up an entire doomed-to-fail shop. She could have simply booked a Monday morning and tried selling her hats. If that went well and her business started growing she could perhaps then book a Tuesday too in the weeks following. Or maybe book double the space she booked last time to stock and showcase more of her hats.
And of course, the flexibility doesn't end there. If similar places were available in other towns and cities she could even expand. Booking a Monday morning in one town, then a Tuesday morning in the next. Reaching a wider customer base than she could in just the one location.
Again, this is little different to market stall holders, who move to different towns and areas each day. It just takes it into the modern era somewhat. The real problem market places have these days is that they're rickety, outside in the cold, and take a lot of trouble to set up.
I would provide a nice indoor place for them :)
They could simply turn up with their car or van (or even bag) full of stock and get going. (You could even potentially provide storage places on site for regular users at a fee).
Another benefit is that it would also allow small traders to deal with both the online and offline world.
The hat lady could sell in Middlesbrough on a Monday morning. In Newcastle on a Tuesday. Then spend all Wednesday dealing with her online Amazon orders. And so on and so forth.
Unlike when she had the entire store in one place, and she couldn't even take a day off because she couldn't afford to hire another staff member.
To sum up..
Obviously it's unlikely I could ever set something like this up, but nevertheless the organic and flexible nature of the idea seems very attractive to me. Certainly in comparison to our dead, cumbersome and abandoned highstreets.
It would also no doubt be nigh on impossible due to all the various regulations and business hoops. So there's that too. Along with the problem of communicating such an idea to the people you'd need to get it all past.
In theory though we should be trying to make it as easy to sell something on the high street as it is to sell something on Amazon. That's if we want to get things blossoming again. (That reminds me, I must remember to start including some smiley flowers in these annoying little doodles).
(There's no real purpose for these things, and they're getting a little creepy and bizarre lol, but I do like having a bit of colour on the page to break things up. It's also handy to have a little thumbnail to display. So I'll keep 'em coming. Mildly disturbing though they look.)
Also, before I finish I should note that there are many further strands to this idea. I'll no doubt do further posts in the future. For example, you could charge different fees for different times. Slots on a busy Saturday would be more expensive than a dead Tuesday morning say. Likewise for different times of the year. The run up to Christmas being extra busy and so forth.
This flexibility would be great for the sellers. Someone selling school uniforms may want more time and space before the start of the school year to meet the high demand; time and space they wouldn't necessarily require at other periods. Likewise at really dead times of the year, when demand is really, really low, the extra space could be hired out super cheap to entice new people. Or for local or student projects to use, and other such things.
Again, super-flexible.
Why are we trying to fill all these empty high street premises with a single business, in the unlikely hope that they'll be there 24/7 for the next 20 years?
No comments:
Post a Comment