The slow death of retail & the fast change of fashion
London, United Kingdom
20 years ago retail stores dominated the high street whilst fashion houses competed to get the premium spots in glitzy department stores. The last 20 years have seen a startling decline in retail as high streets have become increasingly sparse and flag ship stores have struggled. In the last few years alone BHS has collapsed, Debenhams has gone into administration, House of Fraser has been taken over by Mike Ashley after serious financial struggles whilst John Lewis is cutting costs. In fact between 2008 & 2019, in the UK alone, 32 major retailers shut down resulting in the loss of 115,000 jobs. 2018 alone saw the death of 26 big companies including Carpetright, Mothercare, Homebase and Toys R US whilst Poundworld went into administration. In fact in the first three quarters of 2018 alone nearly 1000 retail businesses went into administration causing the loss of 85,000 jobs. This caused the number of premises lying empty to soar by more than 4,400 as 24,205 retailers closed.
“Convenience is king and when returns are so easy and online services so quick to deliver products the need for high streets shops has declined rapidly”
The collapse of retail has been brought about by rising rents and the growth of online retail. According to the FT, the UK had the third largest online retail penetration of any country across the globe with online retail accounting for over 20% of the retail market. The rise of Amazon and other next day delivery services has rendered many high streets and shopping malls obsolete. Convenience is king and when returns are so easy and online services so quick to deliver products the need for high streets shops has declined rapidly.
In 1920 there were 950,000 shops in Britain by 1997 just 300,000 and the decline has continued. In 2019, 16,073 shops closed around 61 every working day and this was forecasted to rise by 9% in 2020. All this before the effects of coronavirus have really hit and the potential that has to further decimate the high street.
All this means that fashion has increasingly moved online. Whilst stores have struggled, online retailers like Net-a-Porter and ASOS have flourished with ASOS reporting a growth of 18% in 2018 and Boohoo which saw sales soar by 53% in the first quarter of that year. This growth in online retail has also helped drive another trend - the growth of fast fashion. As online shopping has gotten more convenient and market places more competitive, fast fashion brands have began to dominate. Online shopping has made finding and buying clothes so much easier. No longer do you have to walk along a high street going in and out of stores or drive into town to find your favourite brand, now everything is just a quick click away. You don’t need to carry shedloads of bags as you go from store to store now either, with online retail it’ll be sent straight to your home often the very next day. Yet this convenience has encouraged fast fashion as shopping for clothes has become an inexpensive form of endless entertainment.
But fast fashion is problematic. As the price of clothes has declined and online retail grown, much of the production of the garments has been outsourced to often underpaid and exploited labour workers in overseas factories. The process is environmentally damaging both in the production and transportation stages. Moreover, the low cost of the clothes and equally low cost to replace them means that they’ve become more disposable as research shows people bought 60% more garments in 2014 than they did in 2000 and only kept the half as long. Online retail exacerbates the issue as the platforms are constantly updated with new designs and styles encouraging consumers to quickly dispose of the top they just bought and replace it with the new trendier one. That is why Fashion Nova launches between 600 and 900 new styles every week and Misguided releases 1,000 new products monthly. It is also why online marketplaces flash with new discounts and deals which encourage you to buy more and more. This trend - buying more clothes and disposing of them faster - is known as fast fashion and fast fashion is destroying the planet!
Samson Royston, March 2020
