Ailing Independent Retailers Get Sales Boost

With the announcement that inflation has reached a 10 year high, and reports of 2,000 local shops closing down each year, a national solution could at last be on the way for the many thousands of small independent retailers struggling to survive in Britain’s town centres.

Their saviour comes in the form of All the Little Shops, a groundbreaking new shopping facility due to be launched on June 24th at the 5th annual Summer School of the Association of Town Centre Management in Liverpool.

The facility has been developed by Shropshire entrepreneur, Peter Riches, whose experience in town centre advertising, design and marketing has achieved three Purple Apple Merit Awards for clients as well as a prestigious Council Beacon award for Shrewsbury.

Speaking about the unique and aptly named new facility, Mr Riches said:
“All the Little Shops is a revolutionary e-commerce solution designed to boost trade for independent retailers, drive footfall into town centres and destinations and promote the local leisure and tourism industry.”

“Buying on-line through a secure single payment gateway, customers are able to make multiple purchases from any number of local shops on one cyber shopping trip. They also have access to a wider choice and variety of products than they could find in any supermarket, as well as details of Park & Ride maps, local attractions, free WiFi cafes and other local points of interest.”

Adopted individually by town centre management groups, each website is set up for independent retailers to use either as an on-line shop or as a catalogue. They can add and change product ranges themselves, access an on-line report facility and receive optional text alerts when an e-sale is made. Each and every retailer gets an equal chance of exposure as a new shop is featured every time the page is refreshed, and through All the Little Shops’ reserve, wrap & collect scheme even the High Street multiples will get a bite of this cherry as footfall will naturally be driven to their doors at the same time.

With the future economy of local towns and communities being reliant upon the success of small businesses, Peter Riches says he is not surprised to have received a high level of pre-launch interest which has been aroused by a pilot scheme in Shrewsbury that already has over 1000 pages listed on Google. One local retailer there, Salop Sheet Music, sold a £700 cello to a customer in Reykjavik, Iceland, as a direct result of the product being ‘googled’ and the customer being directed to allthelittleshops.co.uk/shrewsbury.

Mr Riches reports that enquiries have already been received by ten town centres who have subsequently engaged in seeking funding to sign up to the scheme, and many smaller town managers are looking to form clusters to jointly share the cost of a regional site. This means All the Little Shops is well on target to have 40 town centre sites operational by the end of 2009.

At last year’s Summer School, members of the Association of Town Centre Management identified their two main priorities as the Regeneration and Development of town centres and Marketing, Communication and Footfall, so they should be delighted to find that All the Little Shops ticks all the boxes in response to their concerns.

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