JAMES ASHTON: Shops are not dead yet - service is still key to success

THE central irony of Debenhams’ decline is that it is doing so badly with an Amazon alumnus at the helm. Imagine how much worse the department store group would be faring if it had appointed a Woolworths or BHS veteran as chief executive instead of Sergio Bucher, who was painted as a digital saviour on his arrival two years ago.

The truth is, whoever was running Debs today would be struggling, with or without the adverse weather conditions that hit trading recently. Not only does it still bear the scars of private-equity ownership, it belongs in the squeezed middle of retail lacking scale and originality.

Nor does digital stardust guarantee success in an unpredictable landscape for shopping.

The leaders that assembled last week at the World Retail Congress in Madrid haven’t totally given up on stores. Call it phygital (physical and digital) or omni-channel or another ghastly buzzword — as long as consumers are getting what they want it doesn’t matter if it is dispensed from behind a counter or from a warehouse on a windswept industrial park.

In its pitch to retailers to be their data-crunching partner of choice, Google illustrated how much more demanding the shopper has become. The words “near me” are dropping out of mobile searches because consumers expect everything they need to be close at hand. The search for “best paper towels”, up 173% year-on-year, is one example of the increasing hunt for recommendations for even the most mundane grocery items.

The biggest impact the internet has made on shopping is the instant price comparison that exposes retailers who are too pricey on basic goods.

They really should know better by now. They are the same retailers used to selling consumers what they didn’t know they wanted and are not tooled up to provide when they arrive in store or online with a precise list of asks.

They are the ones that must revamp their supply chain so shops can become as reliable as the average website for stock and delivery.

The store is not dead yet, just in need of an overhaul. A report a few years ago by McKinsey said that despite everything seemingly going digital, bricks-and-mortar would still account for about 85% of US retail sales in 2025. Joe Jensen, a retail expert at Intel, thinks shops could be much more effective with the hi-tech touch.

Fill them with sensors — and not just cameras to spot shoplifters — and, among other things, they can size up a shopper wandering about in menswear and send him via a nearby advertising panel details of a jacket in the right size that was also in stock.

Have tastes changed so much? There is still demand for everything that long-lost Woolworths stocked — down to the pick ’n’ mix — it is just that numerous other retailers do it better.

What has changed is the urgent need to invest, which makes shareholders wary. When Walmart arrived in the UK with the acquisition of Asda, getting on for a generation ago, it gave the competition the shivers that Amazon inspires today. It is no coincidence that Asda, under new boss Roger Burnley, is playing catch-up with the rest of the supermarkets because Walmart has been draining dividends from the UK for years.