| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Hewson Books not reopening | |
| Posted by: | Tracie Dudley Craig | |
| Date/Time: | 09/02/25 18:05:00 |
| I have to say that the news (unconfirmed?) that Holland & Barrett will be taking a space in the High Street had my jaw scraping the parquet. Who - and I mean *who* - thinks to themselves ‘Oooh, I must pop to the High Street and get some digestive enzymes/collagen peptides/creatine monohydrate - we’re all out!’ - especially mid-morning on a rainy Tuesday in November? It’s really up there with the Top Ten Surreally Bad Ideas of Our Time, a game in which Brentford certainly has some skin.* H&B has spent a huge amount of money on a rebrand to try and increase their relevance in the ‘wellness’ market. They still aren’t sexy and - more to the point - that particular market sector is overwhelmingly, much more sexily, web-dominated: the body-builders have their favoured stores, the diet and wellness fanatics have theirs. Everyone else gets their multivitamins with the weekly big shop or drops in to an H&B in their regular shopping centre. Is there not some sort of moral obligation to let retailers (who have seldom carried out adequate, meaningful market research before choosing new sites) know that they will be standing at the top of a precipice, chucking bundles of twenties over the edge? For the retailer, it’s a mind-blowing hiding to nothing. For the developer, it’s a brow-wipe moment when a lease is signed. And this leads us to the perennial problem: without useful anchor stores creating meaningful out-of-area footfall (including - especially - on weekdays), the independents don’t stand a chance. By the same token, AT THIS STAGE a dietary supplement shop in Brentford will do Sweet FA for anyone. Could someone think about opening some useful shops? Perhaps a full-service pharmacy open on Saturdays and Sundays? Greater choice of quality groceries? John, the brilliant Brentford Cobbler in a space accessible to us and affordable to him? Things that we need and - conceivably - people in neighbouring areas might want too. Then the area will get the footfall, the retailers will get the revenue and we’ll get the vibrant High Street we deserve! *See also: the space currently being developed in the Goddard’s building. Apparently it’s ‘luxury Italian kitchens’. Now… call me naīve, but don’t all those new flats come with freshly-fitted kitchens? Who, in their right mind, would come to Brentford to choose a kitchen? (Plus, if the mud-coloured, marbled laminate panels in the window are anything to go by, their concept of ‘luxury’ is… ahem… somewhat different to mine. It’s making 1980s MFI resemble something bespoke from Plain English.) |