We were telling local councils all this years ago, of course, but as we were only market traders nobody took any notice. They preferred to pay expensive consultants to come up with expensive solutions, many of which they couldn't afford to implement, and those they did were usually disasters.
Giving credit where it's due, our present local council has been engagingly helpful since they came in last May, and together with the Northampton BID they are taking measures which Mary Portas would approve of for starters, although it will be a long haul to get the Town Centre back to what it was in the 1980's and earlier. Hopefully things are on the up now though, and this will be an encouraging thought to carry through the long winter days.
The basic idea is to get more shoppers into the Town Centre. Not just any people. Not just free-event vultures. But shoppers, people with money to spend, and who want to spend it in our Town Centre. Ideally, all events should be aimed at shoppers. You only have to read this report by Mary Portas to see that she realises this, too. Town Centres should be focussed on attracting shoppers, not merely playing the numbers game of getting a higher footfall, which can be easy to do for one day here and another day there, but means little in terms of monthly takings at your shop or market stalls. You can have 1000 hard-up people in a town centre for a day, and they maybe won't spend £3000 between them. You can have 100 serious shoppers in the same place, and they will easily spend £100 each. Go figure, as our American friends would say.
Another important point made by Mary Portas is that there must be cheap or free parking. When did you last pay to park in your local supermarket car park? Never, like me? We cannot entirely lay the blame for expensive parking on local councils, because in Thatcher's time the amount of money given back to local councils by national government was cut drastically, and they were told to raise more revenue locally. So most took the easy option of charging higher car parking fees, viciously enforced by the new-style traffic wardens. So shoppers began to desert the town centres for the free parking in the retail parks and the supermarkets that were mushrooming on the periphery of towns throughout the country. So shops in town centres began closing, big stores followed them, and eventually we got what we have got today, empty shops, pound shops, and charity shops galore, all competing for the sparse quid from hard-up customers, most of whom have no car to visit the out-of-town supermarkets.
Then there is making the town centres look attractive, bright, sparkling even. Cleanliness helps a great deal here, and one of the problems faced by the morning clean-up crews is the mess left behind by late-night revellers, a hangover from the '24-hour economy' so beloved of some of the prats who used to run the town council in days gone by. By all means encourage families to come into town to wine and dine and go to evening events of all kinds; but we do need to get rid of the drunken binge-drinking which keeps families away.
So far we have had an encouraging start, both from the Northampton BID, and from the borough council, and also from all those shopkeepers and store managers who have made some effort to decorate their retail outlets this Christmas. Even the market traders have begun to decorate their stalls again, something I haven't seen in recent years. At one time all the market was decorated for Christmas, and we even had competitions for best decorated stalls and stallholders, with the prize-giving ceremony at the top of the Market Square.
So we can work toward and hope for those days to return, but it will need much effort from all of us. Certainly there is hope in the air, and with the publication of this most important report from Mary Portas there is optimism that national and local governments will begin to take steps to recharge the markets and the town centres in which they stand.
As for me, I'm considering early retirement and investing in becoming a Market Consultant. I've had plenty of experience in telling people how to run their markets, and I think there will be plenty of work for us genuine consultants in future. With that happy thought in mind, I would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
And to get in the mood, try this one from my old friends The Pogues:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&v=NrAwK9juhhY
Or a classier version here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwHyuraau4Q&feature=related
