Shops: fewer, smaller and better. The future.

So the inevitable is finally taking place. For years retailers have been in a headlong rush to open new stores at the expense, possibly, both of quality and consumer demand. The outcome across Europe has been too many shops and while many have been quick to blame the internet for the demise of some terrestrial retailers, this has been more symptom than cause.

At the heart of shuttered stores have been back-pedalling economies and too many outlets and while the internet may have accelerated a difficult trading climate, this may not be the root of the problem. Now we are seeing a change on the part of many terrestrial retailers as they strive not to increase the square footage that they operate from, but to improve that which is already in place.

Tesco’s Hertford mark in the sand, as far as refurbishing its estate is concerned, is the most obvious case in point, but retailers from River Island to Dixons have been upping the in-store ante for some time now. In truth, improvement and refurbishment should be a matter of course, but portfolio sprawl has tended to dominate for some years.

The real question is whether retailers and shoppers will benefit in the longer term? And the likely answer is that in spite of the torrid trading that many have had to endure, what emerges will be better, albeit there will be fewer places in which to enjoy a little retail therapy. The UK is still among the most over-shopped locations anywhere and the rush to get bigger has led to ‘formats’ rather than shops, as high streets everywhere became open-air versions of our larger malls.

This too seems set to change. Not only is there a move towards providing better interiors for shoppers, but offers are being localised. Practically, this means rather more than having a logo above a shop that bears the name of the town or district where it is located. Instead, the Top Man General Store (which looks like an independent outlet, rather than an offshoot of a chain) in London’s Spitalfields shows how real variation can give you an entirely different view of what a retailer stands for.

All of which means that the outlook for shoppers may improve. There is an extent to which multiple iterations of the same format have been responsible for the problems that have beset retailers. We may be moving towards fewer, smaller and more relevant shops all round.