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New survey highlights on the high street
PRESS STORY
New survey highlights
big changes in high street retailing and discovers just how ‘hands on’ the
chief executives of the leading store chains really are. 89 percent of bosses
say their attitude to the importance of ‘display’ has changed.
Big polarisation in high street, ‘hands-on led’ firms expanding
while retailers with more ‘detached’ management style contracting.
‘
The successful chief executives are now getting involved in every aspect of
their stores right down to shop floor details says industry expert
Paul Brooks
LONDON 31 May 2006: An
independent focus group survey conducted amongst the UK’s top retailers
this month on behalf of the UK’s biggest shopfitting
and display providers SFD reveals much fascinating information. Fifty delegates
sourced from the cream of the UK’s high street retailers, gave their
current informed views on a variety of key issues.
Executive summary:
A significant
90 percent of delegates said that their own organisations placed great importance
upon displays (or visual merchandising-VM as they
call it) both in the windows and in the stores themselves. Indeed, a fifth
of delegates’ firms reported that ‘VM’ was recognised at
the highest level in their organisations, with founders or chief executives
taking personal responsibility.
Visual merchandising is perceived as a genuine means of gaining competitive
advantage by the ‘top brass’ of the major High Street retailers,
with all bosses saying that this was considered to be ‘very important’ – while
89 percent said that this board-level attitude towards VM has changed considerably
in recent years.
Paul Brooks, co-founder with his brother David of the UK’s biggest VM
suppliers SFD, which sponsored the survey, said: “The most significant
finding to be discovered by the research is just how ‘hands on’ the
founders and chief executives are in the most successful retailers, getting
involved in every aspect of visual merchandising at shop floor level. This
is a real contrast from CEO's in other industries who take a far more detached
and strategic role.”
The survey also discovered that retail bosses rated ‘commercial
experience’ four times more important than retail experience and 79 percent
advised that ‘commercial awareness’ was vital in order to truly
understand branding, pushing qualities such as knowledge of fashion and retailing
into qualities that – while still important – were less important
in today’s competitive environment.
Rivals: Finally, retailers were asked: ‘Other than your own, which stores
do you most admire?’ Here are the results:
1. Selfridges
2. Top Shop
3. Zara
4. Liberty’s
5. Barneys NY
6. River Island
7. Harvey Nichols
8. Prada
9. House of Fraser
10. GAP
11. Urban Outfitters
Paul Brooks concludes: “We are seeing polarisation
in the High Street, where some retailers are benefiting from CEO commitment
at every level – evidence the latest £0.5bn M&S investment
for example – which is inspiring customers and winning market share,
while other less ‘hands-on’ retailers are actually contracting
their merchandising teams and are suffering accordingly in the battle for
sales. “