Last night’s Mary Queen of Shops was a dramatic contrast to last week’s fiasco.
Retail guru Mary Portas continued her crusade to save Britain’s plucky independents from the evil Tesco empire as it continues its Blitzkrieg-style invasion of every British high street.
However, had she met many more people like Angela Maher, the bakery owner who in last week’s episode resisted all help, stifled the enterprise of her likeable head baker and eventually kicked Portas off the premises, I suspect the Harvey Nichols saviour might have declared Britain’s shopkeeper’s deserving of a steamrollering by Tesco Metros and washed her hands of them.
Fortunately, however, she found this episode’s struggling shopkeepers rather more receptive to her retail therapy for entrepreneurs. It marks a return to normality on the makeover show format, where initial reticence gives way to enthusiasm as the programme subjects overhaul their operation and rediscover their enthusiasm and repair their balance sheets.
The implied, doom-laden scenario was clear: a dystopian future where a giant Tesco is the sole retailer in every village
Going, going...
This week Portas took a trip to Dorset to rescue a local village convenience store run by refugees from the London rat race. “Nigh on 500 village shops are closing down every year” Portas lamented. “Those village shops are the heartbeat of the community and they’re just going, going...” Gone? No, “going”.
But still, the implied, doom-laden scenario was clear: a dystopian future where a giant Tesco is the sole retailer in every village. “What is it that they’re doing so wrong?” she wondered.
Well, in this instance, it was selling too much Heinz Spaghetti Hoops, frozen chicken balti and pot noodles and not enough local produce sourced from the local community. They made a token sop to the lifestyle that local people might lead, with a hamper hidden on one of the bottom shelves, with a couple of bottles of wine and a green pesto, but it was no more than an afterthought. Clealls store was losing £6,000 a month.
Ex IT sales manager Juliette and former market trader Chris moved from South London to what Portas dubbed a “chocolate-box setting”, a Dorset village called Corfe Castle, to fulfil their dream of living in a country idyll. Unfortunately, however, not only did they have no experience of running a shop, but they were less enamoured with the people than they had with the scenery that had made them choose Corfe Castle in the first place.
Chris euphemistically noted that the locals “had their ways” while Juliette expressed it more forcefully, describing Corfe Castle as “The Vicar of Dibley on acid”. One visitor to the shop confirmed the veracity of this depiction, joking: “Don’t you look at me like that, I’ve got a ferret up here that’ll do you!”
The disconnect between the Londoners the community was palpable. The only thing more incongruous than the erstwhile south London market trader living among a small community populated mostly by OAPs was Mary Portas’s metropolitan chic apparel compared to tweed and wax jacket favoured locally.
Canvassing the views of locals, Portas was told that the newcomers “don’t communicate with people and they don’t stock the things that we need”. “Bad reputation spreads like wildfire,” Portas fretted. Another old lady pointedly said: “In a village community it’s your personality – you’ve got to sell yourself before you sell whatever. You’ve got to put yourself out.”
London-style convenience
Chris and Juliette had fallen in love with Corfe Castle because it was everything that London wasn’t. And yet with the layout and stock in Clealls, they had effectively tried to import a London-style convenience store into the community.
Anyone who has lived in London will be know that there’s less of a premium on friendliness and building a rapport with the community among shopkeepers, who can rely on plentiful passing trade. If you’re a busy commuter after 10 Marlboro Lights then you don’t care if a shop is cluttered, dingy and lacking in character – so long as it’s near. But in a small community like Corfe Castle it mattered a whole lot.
In a bid to ensconce Chris and Juliette them in the local community, Portas got them involved in a hunting trip, took Juliette to meet, somewhat awkwardly, the elderly regulars at the local bowling green and, with the help of a long-standing community member, compile a pub quiz based on the local area. Chris then played the quizmaster role at the local boozer and, his new-found enthusiasm oiled by beer, ingratiated himself successfully with the regulars.
So successful had their campaign to get to know their community been, that locals even helped to fill the shelves when the refit was running over schedule. The store reopened with a new, airier more rustic layout and decor, stocked with fresh, local produce, and takings soared.
Normal service resumed then for the Queen of Shops.
