Online shopping threatens struggling UK department stores

When the Bournemouth branch of the British department store chain Debenhams closed in spring 2021, it seemed to many like the end of an era.

Long a bustling meeting point at the heart of the seaside resort’s centre, the store was one of 160 Debenhams branches to close across the UK, and its departure risked signalling the permanent eclipse of Britain’s high streets, their vitality sapped by online shopping and the heavy hand of the pandemic. Once one of the world’s largest retailers, Debenhams joined a long list of familiar UK brands felled by changing economic trends: Another chain, Beales, also went into administration in 2020, while Edinburgh’s Jenners, long Scotland’s best-known department store, closed its doors in 2021.

The department store may be a British invention — one that has endured in the UK for more than 200 years — but if the model is going to prosper in its third century, it will need to adapt. That’s the message from Save Britain’s Heritage; the preservation advocacy group recently released a report that counted 231 vacant department stores nationwide in 2021.

The loss of these retailers is more than just a worrying symptom of economic downturn, the report says. Department stores often occupy large, historic buildings that dominate town centres — “cathedrals of commerce” that can play a critical role within cities as hubs of commercial and social activity as well as architectural interest. But as shopping habits change, many familiar brands are reeling from the challenges of operating in a post-pandemic world.

“When you think of the department store that your grandparents shopped in, and the one that you shop in today, they’re effectively the same experience,” says Kelly Askew, MD of business and retail consultancy Accenture Strategy. “You’re still walking your way through a mouse maze, grabbing things off the shelves and racks, and taking them potentially to a changing room, potentially, to a checkout. That paradigm hasn’t changed in 50, 60 years — whereas almost everything else that we experienced in day-to-day life has evolved or completely changed.”

Debenhams

In Bournemouth, the fate of the former Debenhams might offer a model for how to reimagine these timeworn icons for a new generation of shoppers. In September 2021, the ornate brick building reopened as Bobby’s — the name under which it first opened 100 years ago. Current owners Verve Properties are trying a new formula to revive both the building itself and the town’s pleasant but slightly faded centre. No longer trying to be a one-stop shop for all customer needs, Bobby’s now emphasises advantages that online shopping cannot: hands-on product sampling, in-person expertise from staff and a sense of community.

On the ground floor, stands selling beauty products mix with a cafe-cum-ice cream parlour, a sushi bar, a watch and jewellery repair workshop, and a nail studio. Local, small-scale brands are favoured, as are events that convey a sense of the place as a local living room — one corner hosts a weekly children’s storytelling session. Upstairs, craft market stalls will soon be replaced with a food hall, while a bakery and rooftop restaurant are also on the way. Already open, meanwhile, is a light-filled exhibition space — which, in a perfect match of location and content, recently hosted an exhibition by photographer Martin Parr, that great chronicler of the British seaside.

While the project is still not complete, Bobby’s seems to be aiming for a retail mix that emphasises local products, practical services and cultural programming. Critically, it’s still essentially a shopping destination. As the Save Britain’s Heritage report notes, when stores are lost to redevelopment or residential conversion — a phenomenon more common in the US — their host cities may see their town centres weakened, and the public can lose access to some of Britain’s most charming, diverse architecture from the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Oxford Street

The issues with keeping these outlets alive aren’t restricted to their business model. While many show grand facades to the public, interiors can be multilevel warrens of nooks and cubbyholes, layouts that reflect the fact that early department stores were often cobbled together from several buildings, with elaborate frontages placed over the top to conceal the joins. The result is often buildings whose floor plans leave some areas semi-hidden and hard to access. The complications of adapting or updating these layouts can hasten demolition: On London’s Oxford Street, for example, Marks & Spencer is pursuing a bid to raze and rebuild its flagship store, a plan that’s been met with strong resistance from environmental and preservation groups.

Rethinking both their obsolescent physical configuration and their dated business model could provide a way forward for struggling stores, says Askew. He counsels retailers to find ways to blend the on- and offline experience rather than attempt to compete with internet-only retailers. These could be harmonised more effectively, he suggests, through practices such as removing checkouts and digitising sales or allowing store visitors to add extra items for in-store scanning to a shopping bag already pre-loaded with essentials ordered online. Strategies like this let customers enjoy some of the ease of online shopping while avoiding its pitfalls, such as being unable to try on clothes before confirming a purchase or having to wait for delivery.

Askew notes nonetheless that while businesses can do a lot to rethink their customer experience, there’s only so much they can do in isolation when it comes to reviving the struggling retail districts in which they are located. “You can put the world’s greatest department store out in a high street of a village where very few people live, and it’s never going to become a destination,” he says.

In that sense, a real future for Britain’s historic department stores requires not just a business strategy, but a larger process that involves reaching out to communities, business associations and local governments. As the Save Britain’s Heritage report makes clear, the future of department stores — either as stores or as sites reimagined for other uses — is substantially about placemaking: “Protecting and reviving these buildings is not only a matter of preserving precious and distinctive architecture,” it says. “It is an opportunity to restore a sense of place.”

Bloomberg
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