If you’re a pro-active independent business in the UK, you may wonder how to connect with like-minded individuals in your area. Being part of a local traders group can be an excellent way to network, share ideas, gain valuable insights and make a positive impact on your community. You may be wondering how trade associations benefit communities and if it’s something you should investigate for your high street.

Trade associations play a crucial role in supporting and promoting local UK businesses and the communities where they trade. Often they get started when a handful of business owners, who are change-makers, come together for the greater good of the high street or town centre. When local businesses collaborate they become a powerful force for change, helping to improve profits by coming together and the overall trading conditions and influencing policy and decision-making. In this blog article, we explore how the benefits of organising a trade association locally far outweigh the challenges.

Understanding your niche

When starting a local trade association, it’s a good idea to understand what makes your high street, town centre or individual business unique. It’s tempting to look towards the next town or one of your neighbouring businesses and think to yourself. “if that’s working for them, it will work for me.” It usually doesn’t resonate with locals who will recognise a lack of authenticity, so it’s better to concentrate on what makes your business district unique. For example, are you a tourist destination or a place where locals shop every day? You can often find inspiration on a local and national level to include as part of your unique selling point and the content you create to promote it. Knowing who your customers are and delivering an experience for them is vital to success.

Clustering for the common good

Community businesses that come together have a noticeable advantage over clusters that go it alone because they emphasise collaboration and a shared agenda of social benefit. When collaboration is the state of play, businesses look outwards and become more inclusive in their approach, not only on their survival and success. This mindset enables an “infrastructure for people to bring up their ideas.” helping high streets transform and survive in the face of ongoing challenges. The logic follows when businesses support each other, they are more likely to grow and thrive as a whole.

People rather than buildings make places

Members of a trade association are often behind the regeneration of  UK high streets across by working together to maximise footfall and animate spaces, creating reasons to be there. Where businesses build on existing attachments and forge new emotional bonds between people and place, there are big opportunities for a transformative and supportive environment to evolve. By involving businesses, community champions and professionals, you create a united front, promoting and advocating for local businesses within the community. Actions like these can help to raise awareness for every local business, large or small.

Fostering economic development

Trade associations also play a vital role in promoting economic development within the local community. One of the main functions of a trade association is to actively support local businesses and professionals, which helps to create jobs and boosts the local economy. They also work to attract new businesses and investment to the area, promoting improvements and growth in the community. They help stimulate discussions that deliver financial support and have the knowledge and expertise to work with local councils to develop programmes that protect jobs, livelihoods and support the long-term transformation of the local economy, infrastructure and services.

Building stronger community ties

If business owners and councils started visualising high street as “hubs; this could result in stronger community ties with a shared purpose locally along with a dynamic high street emerging. As mentioned in this blog article, identifying your niche as a business district can help drive this change. By turning high streets into destinations catering to consumers, with activities such as arts and creative pursuits, community gathering places, food and drink spots, and adding places for co-working are a good places to start. Few of these activities involve retailing as their primary activity, but as your “hub approach” takes hold and grows, retailers can gather around them. High streets are well-placed to host mix use of businesses and places.

When business owners “give back to the community”, this boosts their reputation and builds trust with locals. One key area that could result in a positive impact is recruiting and retaining staff. Job seekers align themselves with businesses that demonstrate caring behaviours and support the local community.

Unlocking the network effect

Starting a trade association in your local area unlocks valuable opportunities to network and collaborate. When forming a trade association, the group can kick-off with a WhatsApp or private Facebook group to arrange meetings and events at convenient times and locations for the participating members. By regularly connecting with other business owners locally, the group will find they start formulating winning ideas, apply learnings and create strategies that translate to real improvements for trading and better experiences for customers in the area.

Hosting ongoing meetings/events will help foster an environment for partnerships and collaborations to emerge within the group, leading to further growth and development. You will also attract new and returning customers to the area by adding timely events that complement what makes it so unique to the location and community; here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Seasonal events and festivals such as the upcoming Coronation street parties, or local high street summer fairs and festivals
• Evens that promote greener, environmentally friendly initiatives, such as cycle rides, walks or Net Zero road races
• Run competitions to promote arts & culture, or encourage entrepreneurs to get involved with a redesign or ideas for a mixed-use space

Influencing policy and decision-making

Forming trade associations can also have a powerful influence on policy and decision-making. Current government initiatives such as the Towns Fund and the Levelling Up programmes may be more of a stopgap than a long-term solution. Members of a trade association can get involved with the direction of travel for future planning of policies that contribute to broader placemaking objectives, such as encouraging active travel, initiatives that promote sustainability, diversity and inclusion, and policies that strengthen the high street and plans for the future.

What are the range of benefits

In conclusion, organising a trade association has many positive benefits for local UK communities. When business owners, champions, and others in the community join forces, the result is an overall environment that promotes business support and economic development, builds stronger community ties, unlocks collaboration and influences local policy and decision-making.

These benefits positively impact the local community, promoting growth, development, and prosperity. If you’re interested in organising a trade association in your local community, SaveTheHighStreet.org offers the resources and services to help you get started. By working together towards common goals, trade associations can make a meaningful difference in the local community, promoting a vibrant and thriving local economy. Have we convinced you that trade associations benefit local UK communities yet?

Get in touch today if you’re thinking of starting a local trade association or want to know more about our services by emailing partners@savethehighstreet.org.

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All 124 Debenhams stores shut in 2021, while many are revamping into mixed-use spaces, a high percentage still remain empty.

UK high streets have undergone significant transformation over recent years, with many retailers closing their doors or empty buildings in their wake. One of the most notable examples is the Debenhams closure, having gone from a focal point in urban centres to suddenly closing its doors after 200+ years of trading. What’s the future of the high street since Debenhams closure? Here’s something that may surprise you, some of the buildings are revitalising communities.

One approach cropping up is repurposing them into mixed-use developments by turning large retail spaces into a combination of residential, commercial and community. A perfect example; where work is underway in Manchester to revamp the Debenhams into a 10-floor shopping arcade with restaurants, a leisure centre, and offices. Similarly, in Carmarthen, Wales, the former Debenhams store will become a “community hub” with a health wellbeing and cultural service venue.  In Bristol, plans are underway to replace the Debenhams in the Bristol Shopping Quarter and turn it into a mixed-use destination with residential, retail and possibly a new cinema up for discussion.

The flagship store on Oxford Street redevelopment prize scheme, awarded to Landlease, prevailed over the favoured Skanska by a sliver and will see the building completely revamped into a new retail and office complex. Plans will also see a new facade and three upper storeys added to the existing building, with outdoor terraces.

The transformation of these iconic buildings is not only providing new and exciting opportunities for communities, but they’re also helping to revitalise UK high streets. By repurposing these empty buildings, developers are creating new jobs and breathing new life into these areas. Furthermore, by providing a mix of residential, commercial and community spaces, everyone experiences more vibrant and sustainable communities.

In conclusion, the UK high street is changing; retailers like Debenhams have had to close their doors. Repurposing these iconic buildings into mixed-use developments, leisure destinations, and commercial and office spaces is a positive solution for communities and the UK economy.

We see the repurposing of iconic department stores as a contributing factor to revitalising high streets, and we’re excited to see what unfolds for the many repurposed buildings. Here are a few that stand out:

• The Debenhams in Manchester city centre will become a mixed-use retail, office and leisure space. The upper floors of the building will be transformed into an office space, while the ground floor will house a retail arcade. AM alpha, rewarded with the redevelopment scheme, plans to “restore Rylands to its former glory in a very sustainable way to help achieve Greater Manchester’s 2038 carbon neutrality target’, said Stephen Schmidt, senior vice president at AM alpha.

• The Debenhams store on Argyle Street in Glasgow will house new offices and include a rooftop restaurant as part of a wider £50m masterplan to revamp the St Enoch Centre. The new shopping centre will feature 1,700 new homes, a four-star hotel, retail shops and community space. The council stated, “The Debenhams building is a very important part of Glasgow, and has long been at the heart of the city’s thriving retail environment. Sadly, the declining department store market dictates that retention of retail shops on the upper floor levels is not viable.

• The Debenhams closure in Birmingham Bullring will soon become a Marks and Spencer store come autumn. M&S plan to offer a “fresh” market-style food hall stocking the full M&S Food range, spacious Clothing, a Home and Beauty department, brand-new M&S cafes and free car parking to make shopping more convenient for customers. The retailer is opening 20 new stores in 2023, including former Debenhams stores. It has also taken the old Debenhams units in Trafford Centre in Manchester, White Rose in Leeds, Lakeside in Essex and Liverpool One.

• The top floor of the Debenhams in the Hounslow Treaty Centre has become a dynamic hub with market stalls selling handmade products and a restaurant serving meals curated by refugees to encourage businesses and customers back to the shopping areas. Since the Debenhams closure in 2021, Hounslow council have worked with partners to launch a multi-purpose “hub” called The Loft. The aim is to reinvigorate the town centre and support independent business growth with a programme that helps market traders launch offered by SaveTheHighStreet with the JO Accelerator made available to traders joining the market.

At SavetheHighStreet we’re on a mission to revitalise local communities by supporting independent businesses and the places where they launch or grow a business. Our JO platform connects businesses with customers and resources, helping them to thrive in the face of challenges and market conditions affecting high streets. We partner with councils, landlords, asset managers, BIDs and others to generate plans that revitalise towns and shopping centres. Learn more about how SaveTheHighStreet.Org could help transform your shopping or town centre by getting in touch.

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Visiting trade shows open up endless possibilities to boost your retail business in 2023. We’re looking at key reasons why they need to be part of your retail strategy each year. Update: Tickets are available for Autumn Fair, 3rd -6th of Sept 

Top 5 reasons why retail businesses need to attend trade shows

Finding new suppliers. A trade show is the simplest way to discover new, exciting products to offer your customers back in your shop and boost your retail business. Once inside, you’ll see the latest products recommended by industry experts.

One thing that may stand out is a competition running in the background –  with categories such as ‘Best Value Product’, ‘Best Innovative Product’, or even ‘Best Newcomer’ –  helping you seek out new items that will excite your customers and show them you are capable of choosing the products they want most for their homes, or to wear or receive/give as gifts.

Capture the latest trends. The seminar schedule, where all the hot topics are discussed, provides an opportunity to find out what everybody else is struggling with and where retailers are experiencing success. They offer vital tips on the best marketing techniques and product trends, looking at the what’s best to initiate and that help your shop be the success you want it to be for the coming year.

There are so many insights shared at these events, often from very high profile speakers, who you’d pay a fortune to go and listen to or receive a mentoring session. Shows like Top Drawer,  Spring Fair, and the upcoming Autumn Fair in September, do their very best to get the experts in their field in front of you so that you can learn and develop your products and services and be the best retail shop on your high street or in your shopping centre. Autumn Fair, held at the NEC in Birmingham brings together  the most sought-after products, suppliers and creative thinkers under one roof. It’s one of the UK’s leading wholesale marketplaces for home, gift and fashion, showcasing fantastic new products from the best brands in retail better in-person and viewing online.

Team building. Your shop team is one of the most vital resources for your business; having them join you at a trade show can cement how much you value them and help you maximise their abilities. 

Having an opportunity away from “work” will help you bond over your values and share what is important to you as the owner – as an example, ensuring you’re all on the same page regarding customer service and experience. 

Knowing that your team appreciates the value of your reputation and the enthusiasm they show to your customers is vital to successful high street businesses. We’re often so busy with the day-to-day that it can be challenging to share your ideas and dreams for your business with your team. Trade shows present the perfect opportunity for this. They’ll love having a say in your selections – see how much more connected they are with selling those products once they’re back in the shop! Making the most of this resource will help your business fly higher this coming year. 

Learn new skills. Listening to experts who specialise in all areas of running a successful business can help to boost your retail business. Seminars and talks include visual merchandising, good practice and seeing first-hand examples of the best window displays or learning how to display and properly market your products on social media that encourages your audience to buy. These valuable learnings applied to your business can be overlooked by teams attending trade shows.

Organisers may offer training on subjects such as growing your social media presence and how to use it to their advantage as a customer support tool for your business. Stay in touch with customers when not physically in your shop, reminding them your business is there and have an array of best-selling products available. Learn how to help your customers choose the best gifts for work colleagues, teachers and other staff, friends and family and the special someone in their lives. 

Networking opportunities. There are always areas for attendees and speakers alike to connect over a coffee. You’ll be grateful for these spaces when you’ve been trawling around the trade stands and you’re feeling a little foot sore! You’ll have lots of common ground with others at the show and these opportunities to meet other retailers don’t come around that often when you find it hard to leave your own shop.

Even if it’s simply a matter of chatting about how sore your feet are! Sometimes it’s good to see what other attendees have found or what they’ve got out of the show so far. Perhaps you’ll hear about any trade stands they feel you shouldn’t miss, or if there are any seminars that they thought were particularly good. There are often some golden nuggets of information in these conversations so don’t miss out!

If you haven’t been to a trade show before, or it’s been a while, have these top tips encourage you to visit one soon? We welcome your feedback. And by the way, we’re going to visit the upcoming Autumn Fair on 3-6 September at The NEC in Birmingham – you can grab your free ticket here. And, you need to hurry before the 9th of August deadline to register!

If you run out of time to attend the seminars because you’re so busy sourcing new items, did you know that we offer business support, ranging from JO for business growth developed over many years of working with high street businesses to bespoke programmes at SaveTheHighStreet, depending on what you’re trying to achieve. We support all types of business, from independents and market traders to councils and landlords looking to reimagine shopping centres and town centres. We’re here to help boost your retail business.

Check out JO today or ask your local authority about the special joint partnerships we’re most likely working on.

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We’re thrilled to be part of a new programme dedicated to helping improve the high street with  Three Rivers District Council. 

We’ll be providing strategies tailored to the unique needs and constraints of every independent trader enrolled in the programme so that we can help them recover and thrive. Under this new scheme, free support will provide recommended action plans to help local businesses achieve individual goals, step-by-step guides and one-to-one support from expert advisors and more.

The provision will be personalised for each business across a number of different themes such as increasing footfall, growing their online presence, collaborating locally, making the most of seasonal opportunities and more. The Three Rives partnership with SaveTheHighStreet is action-oriented and created to enhance and improve the overall health of the high street within a short period of time.

Early days of the campaign and independent businesses in the area have let us know. “The calls have been really helpful and all the information has been made available to us as a free service. Normally would have to pay for that kind of information.” We love hearing positive feedback on the actions we recommend and how we help businesses at any stage of their business from early start, to make or break to growing more profits and everything in between.

All local independent businesses with a presence on the Three Rivers high street in a market or shopping centre, as well as anyone who cares about the success of their local high streets are now encouraged to find out and more and register at https://savethehighstreet.org/threerivers or email hello@savethehighstreet.org to request more information.

If you want to know more about our programmes and partnerships, please get in touch with us and let us know what kind of support your high street needs today. We look forward to hearing your stories.

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The event pulls together the UK’s most diverse network of retail brands, landlords, agents, operators, property developers, franchise operators and shopping centre owners as well as local authorities community champions and others interested in the high street.

Our team from SaveTheHighStreet.org played a role throughout the day, by delivering several elements of the event.

Our Place Director Cat Mitton, Community Director Julie Holden and COO David Whiteley all hosted topical Roundtable discussions, each with an invited focus group of Local Authority and real estate stakeholder. 

Founding Partner Alex Schlagman launched and hosted this year’s ‘Soapbox’, a spectacular showcase of 8 new and emerging brands. 

The team alongside Customer Success Director Majella Victor and High Street Advisory Board Members John Abbate and Paul Clifford delivered 1-to-1 ‘Ask the Expert’ consultation sessions, providing on-demand advice to local businesses and others throughout the day. 

Here’s a summary of the Roundtables:

Session 1 – “How can public and private sector partnerships drive funding into high street and town centre regeneration? “  

Some of the questions we discussed:

1. What are the barriers to investment in town centre regeneration?
2. Should town centre regeneration be led by the local authority?
3. How should local property sector stakeholders be engaged and involved in town centre regeneration?
4. What investment should be directed towards local high street businesses? Local high street start-ups? Local community champions? Other bottom-up regeneration approaches?
5. How has Covid-19 affected funding streams? Have you seen a shift in priority for town centres?
6. Is the business improvement district model the best way to connect public and private partnerships? What other models achieve a unified partnership?

Session 2 – “How does the built environment respond to changes in town centres?”

Some of the questions we discussed:

1. How are town centres changing today?
2. What are the big trends and forces driving change in town centres? What changes are they bringing?
3. What effects do these changes have on local communities? How desirable are they and are they to be encouraged or resisted?
4. How important is it to manage change in town centres and why? How should change be managed? Who should be involved and how?
5. What does a good town centre look like? Who sets the standard? How important is the mix between commercial, office and residential, and why?
6. What needs to change – at central government level, by local government, in communities, by landlords and with high street businesses?

Session 3 – “How can Local Authorities engage and empower others to shape and transform the places they love?”

Some of the questions we discussed:

1. Who are the key influencers and stakeholders within a town or a place?  Where are they and why do they matter?
2. What are the barriers to engaging the different stakeholders?
3. How can improved collaboration help to drive footfall? Improve trading opportunities? Other benefits to the town centre?
4. What role do high street businesses themselves play in shaping and transforming local places? What are the most common problems they are facing post Covid19?
5. What skills and resources does a Local Authority need to lead these initiatives? Why and when does it make sense to bring in specialist external support?
6. What models of support, engagement and signposting are seeing the best results?

Recordings of each workshop will be available soon. 

If you’d like us to send these to you when they’re available, just send us an email to partners@savethehighstreet.org

Thanks to the teams at SiteMatch, Revo, Completely Retail and everyone else involved for delivering such a vibrant informative event. It was great to reconnect with so many old friends from across the industry and we hope to see more events like this over the coming months.

You can watch the event showreel here: https://vimeo.com/623399896?mc_cid=1a9323859b&mc_eid=98a2c611b1

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Would you like to join a hard-working, passionate team on a mission to reinvent and revive the high street?

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The internet is for everyone. While there are certain groups of people that are more internet-active than others, everyone is online these days. By selling online, you open your shop up to a huge market of people from all walks of life. The internet is the biggest market of shoppers in history. By connecting with this incredible marketplace, you can grow sales and your customer base to a far greater degree than if you only exist offline. Once you’re “e-commerce” enabled, you can sell well beyond the borders of your usual consumer base.

And really this is one of the biggest advantages to e-commerce. You aren’t limited by your physical shop. Are you in a bit of a poky, hard to reach location? Not a problem online. Do you have a narrow storefront, overshadowed by larger shops on either side? Your online storefront has no such problems. This is one of the ways that e-commerce can help you level the playing field with big chains.

Of course, this isn’t to say that e-commerce is easy. And at the end of the day, it’s got to be your decision, for your shop. But below we’ve listed a few ways that e-commerce can help you grow your business, to help you see what e-commerce can do for you.

E-Commerce Improves Availability

All brick-and-mortar shops have an opening time and a closing time. Some big chains can stay open all-day, but this takes a big staff that most independents can’t afford to maintain. This means that there are long periods of time each day (or more accurately each night) when you aren’t selling. And these days more and more people are getting online, in the later hours of the day, and browsing products from the comfort of their own homes. Using e-commerce eliminates the limitation of ‘open hours’ as it remains open 24/7, letting shoppers shop at their own convenience.

Unlimited Customer Reach

Whatever you put on the internet is for the world to see. Unlike physical stores that are limited to their physical area, e-commerce has no such limitation to how wide your customer reach can be. E-commerce provides increased visibility and sales by letting everyone that’s looking for your products online find you. Even when you’re targeting a niche audience, you’re guaranteed to expand beyond your shop’s physical area. And since shoppers don’t have to make it to your shop to browse your products, you’ll be gaining loyal customers across the country. Shoppers a hundred miles away will be browsing your products from the comfort of their own beds. Which brings us to what, for most consumers, is the best part of e-commerce.

Easy, Convenient Purchases

Shopping online is convenient. That’s its real strength. There are plenty of downsides to shopping online, like having to buy a product without actually seeing it in person and without being able to talk to a shop assistant if you have any special wants or requirements. It’s also lacking the personal touch of the in-store experience and you don’t get any of the atmosphere or community that a physical shop might have. But by God is it more convenient.

It’s more convenient for customers to stay at home and place an order from the comfort of their bed, rather than travelling all the way out to a store. There’s no waiting in line and you don’t need any cash either. With recent advances in in-browser information storage, you don’t even have to enter your card deals separately for every purchase. Every product you could ever want to buy is just a few clicks away. E-commerce skips the stress of pushing a shopping cart and looking for the product everywhere in the store. It lets you find what you’re looking for via a search function, so you don’t have to wonder through all the products you aren’t interested in.

So Why Not Give it a Try?

At the end of the day, e-commerce is a great opportunity to facilitate sales. It’s a great way to just let your customers buy. Let them browse from home, even if they live far away, or are usually too busy to shop. Let them buy with a few clicks of their mouse and a few taps of the keyboard. Let your customers shop the way they want to shop and you’ll see your sales grow. You might also see your footfall rise with your sales. A little online notoriety can bring customers in and if someone made a purchase, who wouldn’t otherwise have found you, or wouldn’t have been willing to travel out to your shop, you might find that happy customer visiting you in-store in future.

If you have any questions about e-commerce or getting online, feel free to get in touch!

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