Retailers must adapt to stay ahead

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Retailers flirt with disaster if they forget their niche, warns Jacqueline Gold.

I’ve talked before about business stewardship being one of the principles behind our organisation.

As a family business we make our investment decisions based on the long-term prosperity of the company not the short-term demands of shareholders. It’s a bit like farming. Nature can teach us other things too, one of which is adapt or die. We just have to do it quicker in retail.

One of the main retail stories recently has been the demise of Game. Wags on Twitter were quick to suggest that we buy some of their stores and rebrand them as ‘I’m Game’ or more intriguingly ‘Game?’.

I’m sure our marketing team would have a field day repositioning the business, underpinned with new launches such as ‘Call of Booty’ and for those who like playing S&M games there could be our version of Angry Birds.

Every retailer right now is to some degree or another troubled by the financing of their business and that may be what has done for Game, but I suspect that its problems are more deep-seated and have much to do with its overall proposition.

Game always struck me as a retail business that snuck up on the high street. It was a place you went to if you were a real enthusiast for gaming: geeks or nerds to some, experts and aficionados to those in the gaming community. It represented the very essence of gaming.

Then like a lot of businesses, as they got bigger and more mainstream, so their new stores will have crept from C to A locations or into D list towns.

In the short term sales will have grown but, with the accompanying hike in rents and the ever slimmer returns, at what cost to the brand? When niche businesses go mass, they can easily lose touch with the core audience that had such a strong affiliation with the brand.

Not only that but the competition begins to circle, the product offer becomes ever more ubiquitous and price becomes the key factor in the buying decision.

We have been guilty of it in the past but while the majority of the lingerie market may be in plain knickers and bras – and it’s tempting to want to steal some of this (albeit very boring) action – that’s not why people love Ann Summers.

Our customers come to us for sexy, so over the last few years we’ve been through a process of reinvention to make sure we we’re not just sexy but sexy with bells on. I’ll let you imagine where the bells go.

So while the wettest nation in Europe introduces a hosepipe ban all I’m hearing about is the demise of garden retailers: no point buying plants if you can’t water them.

Just like Game they too must adapt or die. So surely what we should be hearing is the wonders of a garden full of succulents and cacti. The opportunity is clear: sexy gardening.