Retail faces challenges

On Friday I had the chance to spend some time in Portobello Road Market West London, a market that has quite a history but a great present and hopefully future too.

Just a fraction of the market.

It was an education to find out how it operates and the challenges that it is facing against a constantly evolving sophisticated retail environment.

Susan Garth is remembered

As retail nichés are revealed (look at how Polish specialities are now available ) and filled by the corporate High street monoliths new entrepreneurs evolve and address the customers.

When one thinks of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea it's easy to characterise the people who inhabit it as the Made  in Chelsea set but the people I saw were diverse and not atypical.


The street market is actually made up of a number of different types of arrangements for their pitches, the council is responsible for some but fixed premises retailers  also supplement their selling space with stalls and there are private areas with pitches too.

Alongside pitches run by second and third generation stall holders are younger and trendier business people aiming at the fashion conscious and collectors - it's good to see a strong  web presence as well as a twitter social media personality  supporting the market.

The other end of retail

As well as thinking about the more frivolous side of retail, chatting with a manager who works in one one of the big six retailers it was educative to be made aware of how the current competitive pressure are driving reconsideration across the large and medium sized shops we use to fill our cupboards and fridges.

Aldi and Lidl are undoubtedly causing a rethink in pricing but the effect in some cases is to dilute the offering,   I personally am not that sure that  the main consideration for the bulk of shoppers is cost - retail is actually a leisure interest and this is confirmed by Bank Holiday behaviour of the population.

The other pressure I was reminded of was that of the on-line shopper in truth the benefits for the customer  are not of a zero sum nature - delays in deliveries and the use of  (near) 'equivalents' can cause dissatisfaction for  customers.

Food-wise the only purchases we've made via the web have been wine and this is probably only every couple of months (and reliant on no/low cost delivery) perhaps this'll change but the lack of human contact and the removal of the chance for impulse buying is not appealing .

Tate and Teletext

Let me recommend Thursday afternoon in November as a good time to visit Tate Britain - very interested to see the somewhat like  (and pleasant ) Mondrian works of Marlow Moss - fascinating story too, sounds something like the Quaint Irene  of E.F. Benson's Mapp books.

Okay across the bridge to the DTG

Also great to find another challenging photographer in the shape of the American Karen Knorr who dissects class issues as only a non- Brit can.

Tate Britain- Lovely at night (and day)

After a quick rush around  I went to an evening  'techie' event which was  a presentation on what is a potentially interesting topic for the technological 'digerati' The History of Teletext given by Peter Weitzel.

The talk under the auspices of the UK branch of SMPTE was held at DTG offices on the Albert Embankment bang next to MI6 offices - well we had what was very much a technical view of the evolution but perhaps it would have been nice to consider how it met people's needs and was in fact the first mass digital product to make it into our living rooms.

Here's a quirky historic clip aimed at a US audience.

What's the secret organisation next door
(actually it's DTG)

It was revealed that the BBC was obliged to see bits of the vertical blanking to companies like Coral who used it to help them run their betting  business- at that time chiefly horse racing.

 

Some interesting points like the fact that it was the major method for booking holidays in the 90's and the overpayment for the 'franchise' was what scuppered commercial TV's involvement and perhaps the development would have gone somewhat differently if ITV had remained involved in their part of the service?

Ebay deliveries 

Interesting that Ebay is now able to deliver free of charge to Argos shops - I've ordered some rather excellent iHip headphones (3 pairs) and have collected  at my local shop all they  needed to do was scan the code that was sent to me- another example of useful technology

Philosophy (Day), Photography and Cooker longevity

I didn't realise that today is designated UNESCO Philosophy day (aren't all days?) until I saw a rather exciting email from 'The Idler' - it's exciting for me that there are people who believe and demonstrate such commitment - great stuff (and as always the ides of looking at The School of Athens is a good one).

Ealing Photographers -

well if you've got a picture of Ealing you'd like to see exhibited give this a try (from OPEN's web site)
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EXHIBITION OF PHOTOGRAPHY AT THE GREEN MAN LANE CAFE

OPEN’s Monday digital photography class plans to end its autumn run with an exhibition of participants’ work, at the Green Man Lane Café on the evening of Monday 8 December. To widen its appeal, OPEN is also offering local photographers who aren’t members of the group a chance to have their work displayed. If you have a suitable shot or two and would like to have it/them considered, please email it/them to info@openealing.com, preferably by next Monday 24th November. Pictures should be on a local theme, and shot on the Large setting, as those selected will be blown up for display. Please mark the subject box PHOTO

Cooker Longevity

On what might have been the last internal course I attended when working at Discovery we were asked to 'share' various things about ourselves at this time I revealed that I liked planting trees and also that I was inordinately (and perhaps inappropriately) pleased to be able to report that I still had a cooker from more than 25 years ago - well a few months ago one of the hotplates failed.

Another e-bay purchase

Another e-bay purchase then and I should admit that I've been putting of making the replacement.

It was with some trepidation (and a fair amount of de-greasing cream) that yesterday I wrestled with changing the element - happy to report that it does seem to have done the job - hopefully continue for some time too.

Death pays a visit to the City Lit Philosophy Course

More than likely to come knocking.

Ahead of yesterday's Philosophy 'key Themes' session I saw a fellow student asked him if he was ready for 'Death'? -in hindsight it might  seem an odd question but it was Death that we would be looking at.

Well it is something that we perhaps tend to avoid but it is the full stop on our life experience and to an extent frames how we behave - more than once as we spoke in the group the idea of an unending life cropped up and it indeed seemed as difficult to reconcile the concept of eternity alive (for me) as the finality (perhaps) of death.

Although science has moved centre stage in explanations of how things happen it has not got any closer to answering the perhaps more difficult 'why'.

Nagel in 'What Does it all mean'  does not purport to have a religious belief himself but acknowledges that many do and it undoubtedly can give purpose to life (and death) to those that do, he also queries why we should concern ourselves with non-existence.

One position for our general dread of death is perhaps the feeling of a loss as we regret in life losing other possessions - Scott brought to our attention the way that people continue their own lives after the death of people close to them this led to discussion of the point of a Darwinian survival or 'Selfish Gene' but this again can explain how life is continued but still not answer the why.


Someone within the group postulated that the purpose of life was broadly speaking pleasure but this did not seem ultimately to satisfactorily resolve the human condition.

So while we can all understand and recognise that death will happen to others as a generality it appears more difficult to reconcile for ourselves.