The New Retailers Opportunity in our evolving high streets

We have been told for many years that our town and city centres are dying. And without doubt many shops, leisure venues and so on are closing – according to PwC's 2024 Retail Outlook, 12,804 of them closed in the UK in 2024 alone. However, what's less reported is that 9,002 of them opened. What's happening in the UK, and across Europe and North America, is not the death of the high street, but its evolution. The Internet has changed how we use it. The high street is less and less a place we need to visit; it is increasingly becoming a place we choose to go to for more complex reasons.

Where once we shopped in person for lower order, consumable items, we now order them online for home delivery. Our in-person retail is firstly convenience - the coffee on the way to a meeting – and secondly a considered purchase of a product or service that really matters to us. We can't get this online. Who wants to order a new home and arrange a mortgage online, discuss an inheritance with a chatbot, or buy complicated tech without guidance from an expert? There is significant opportunity here for brands that sell high stakes products and services - the estate agents, financial advisors, legal experts, healthcare professionals, travel consultants and so on - but it is one that few have so far fully recognised and optimised for. Here's how they do it.

Retail fundamentals
The first rule of retail is to understand your customer. Creating a desirable retail experience begins with a deep understanding of what your specific target audience wants. Crucially, you need an understanding not only of what they want today, but what they will be open to tomorrow - explore mindset and values as much as demographics. Next, devise a structured and sequenced customer journey. Whether visiting a law firm or a fast-food restaurant, people respond positively to what you might call 'advanced courtesy' or deliberately designing ways to treat the customer as you would wish to be treated. The human, the physical, and the digital all have a role to play in-store, and the interplay should be carefully designed.

The most successful retailers today are building communities, and this will be even more vital for these high stakes retailers. With any important purchase people want the reassurance that others like them are also buying. They want to learn from them. Look at how Apple attracts communities of customers not just with its Genius Bar and the experts who populate it, but also with its regular seminars and event programmes. There is significant opportunity for firms in property, finance, wellbeing, automotive, home improvement and so on to build on this model. Don't ignore the tangible. Physical objects can be a very effective way to deepen customers' connection to an intangible service. It's an opportunity to express personality, soften the experience, create comfort and reassurance, and spark conversations that might unlock latent sales opportunities. For example, in its retail spaces estate agent Hamptons uses props as mental prompts for the comforting environment of a home. The props remind customers what they want from a property, and crucially change their mindset from transaction to connection.

A new vision for the high street
Finally, do not underestimate the scale of this challenge. Even global retail icon IKEA has found it hard to shift from its classic out of town giant stores to small urban formats, with its 'expert planning service' as a key anchor. It's found it hard to shift perception of IKEA as an out of town retailer, and these high stakes retailers have an equally tough job to change people's view of them.

There is a lot to get right. Doing so requires creativity, innovation and experimentation, none of which is cheap or free from risk. Yet the ones who seize this opportunity, who create retail spaces that people truly want to visit to get expert advice on high stakes purchases, will be those who thrive in the years ahead. It will allow them to forge deep connections with customers; build their brands and be more present in people's lives.