How the high street could work for local people: A day in the life of Dermot, a local business owner
The Living High Street is our plan to save the UK’s big retail brands with people-led change — transforming the role they play on the high street, and enabling their people to innovate and collaborate.
Here we’re outlining how The Living High Street would work in practice — how it would enable the people in the local area to get more done, and support each other and local businesses.
Meet Dermot
Dermot is the owner of a local bakery and eatery group.
10.00: Meets his team at WHSmith Skill Zone for a pre-booked training session for the ePos system he’s renting from 3 To Go.
12.00: Helps his team with the lunchtime rush at M&S Marketplace. They sell out of Eccles Cakes, so he uses an app on his phone to arrange for Yodel Depot to bring more from his bakery in a local business park.
14.00: Pops into Lollo & Bernie’s Kids Club to talk to the owner about seasonal changes to the children’s snack boxes he supplies.
15.00: Meets salesperson from a clean energy supplier he’s thinking of switching to at Zizzi’s Meeting House & Kitchen. Proud that he sees several tables ordering his new-recipe brownies that he supplies to this branch.
19.00: Networking session at TSB Business Hub. Other local foodie business owners meet to share ideas, and hear a nationally live-streamed talk from Whole Foods’ head of operations.
The Living High Street isn’t real… yet. It’s our plan that could save big retail brands from a slow and painful decline. It’s grounded in driving the metrics that retailers care about — footfall, basket size and first party data. And it’s all do-able today with off the shelf SaaS (software as a service). But what it does require is a transformation of how retailers think about themselves, how they organise themselves, and how they manage their people.
Please share The Living High Street within your organisations and beyond, so that the CEOs of high street retailers hear about it. Of course we’d love to be part of making this happen — but more than that, we want to see it happen.
Read more:
- What is The Living High Street?
- A day on Living High Street for a working parent, a high street store manager and a local council rep
- How M&S, WHSmith, Zizzi, TSB, Thomas Cook, 3 and Yodel can empower their people to save the UK high street
- The principles behind Living High Street
- How to make Living High Street real?
Albion is a creative transformation partner. We’ll work alongside your teams, empowering them to work in new ways, design new services, and unlock new growth. If that’s interesting, please get in touch with our CEO: jenny@albion.co.
