Old School Shopping

 

There’s an episode of the 1980s sitcom Ever Decreasing Circles in which Richard Briers’ character, the obsessive and slightly neurotic Martin Bryce, has cause to visit his local ironmonger. It’s a properly old school establishment, and his reason for visiting is simple: he wants a single galvanized six-inch nail, which the local DIY store insists in selling in multipacks. Mr. Lazenby, the ironmonger, a frail old man, happily complies with his request.

I had cause to visit just such an establishment myself this past week. Not an ironmonger (I doubt if any still exist) but a hi-fi shop. It’s been in Burton on Trent for as long as I can remember, but, I’ve never had cause to visit it before. It has a properly old school name: The London Wireless Company. Don’t bother looking for it online, you won’t find it. This is retailing as it used to be.

The first thing I noticed when I went inside was a small display case behind the counter, containing replacement cartridges and styli for record decks. I remember seeing them in hi-fi shops way back in the 1970s, but it’s been years since I saw one in situ. The shop sells high end home entertainment, mostly huge televisions, but with a line of what looked to be decent hi-fi equipment. The proprietor (imagine a Toby Jones type) looked entirely at home in his surroundings, emerging from a back room when I entered the shop. There was no one else around. I noticed old carpeting on the floor and an area of vintage wallpaper behind the counter – better and better.

My reason for visiting was simple: I knew the shop undertook repairs (this much, at least, can be gleaned online, although the shop has no website), and I wanted some adjustments made to my Denon record deck, which was playing slightly too fast. It’s the kind of thing that would have annoyed Richard Briers’ character: hearing a song playing in E double flat instead of D major: the platter was rotating at maybe 34rpm. I left it there and about a week later got a phone call to say the deck was ready for collection. The cost was a mere £25 which I found entirely reasonable. The deck now plays perfectly.

I mention all this as an example of what we’re in danger of losing in the blinkered rush to online retailing. Old fashioned personal service. I’m not averse to buying the odd book or CD from Amazon, but given the choice I’d still prefer to get them from a real shop in the physical world. Unfortunately, I appear to be one of a dwindling minority.

There’s a generation now that weren’t alive in the era before online retailing, and their lazy preference for shopping from the sofa has already cost us several high street retailers who you’d have thought would endure forever. At time of writing, the venerable WH Smith high street chain is up for sale and will likely cease to exist in any recognisable form.

Call me old fashioned, but I refuse to pass judgement on any product until I’ve seen it for real. Anything can be made to look impressive in a photograph. I can’t understand people who buy clothes online. You can’t tell anything about a garment from a photograph apart from its appearance. When buying clothes I want to see how well they’ve been put together, feel the texture of the fabric, get a proper appreciation of quality.

Even car retailing is moving increasingly towards an online platform with the likes of Cazoo, where you pick your vehicle from an image on the internet and it is delivered to you on a trailer. Unless and until this is the only means of buying a vehicle, I refuse to go along with it, however good, bad or indifferent the experience. In the past few years, I’ve bought a couple of cars, in the process of which I checked out numerous examples online. Nine times out of ten, when I finally got to see the vehicles for real, there were defects visible that the photos didn’t show: paint swirls, small dents, chips, scuffs and the like.

Back in the 70s and 80s, shopping was a much more interesting experience, because you never knew what you were going to find. You’d go into a record retailer and come across an album you never expected to see. In my case, collecting secondhand books, I was forever discovering caches of unexpected treasures like Giles annuals of impossible vintage. Today, the collector can usually track down all but the rarest and most elusive items online, but it’s not quite the same. I’ve collected old guitars for forty years, and still nothing compares to the moment when, stepping into some musty emporium that’s been in business for decades, you stumbled upon an unbelievable old relic gathering dust high up on some pegboard wall.

I’m not completely anti online as a tool in the collector’s arsenal – it’s enabled me to track down some very interesting and unique artefacts I’d never have found by other means. I just don’t want it to become the default method of going shopping.

It’s easy to see why retailers are participating in this seismic shift towards online: retail premises are costly to build, rent and maintain. Never mind the question of convenience. Banks have largely decided to abandon those customers who still want to use them in person, and in so doing are driving more and more customers into the waiting arms of online scammers. I’ve banked with Barclays since 1983, but our local branch closed for good last year. A few months later, in response to demand from customers, they were obliged to open a ‘pod’ (tent to you and me) in the local shopping mall where you can still deal with a real person (well, they looked real when I walked by but who knows what AI is capable of...)

Forty years ago, when John Esmonde and Bob Larbey were writing Ever Decreasing Circles, the internet did not exist – not in any recognisable form at any rate, and certainly not accessible by anyone other than academics in computing. Back in 1987, the ‘enemy’ was the out of town shopping park, examples of which were springing up on the fringes of just about every average-sized town. Martin Bryce apologises to Mr. Lazenby for using the local DIY superstore instead of his old, independent establishment. The principle, however, is still the same – big corporations sweeping away the smaller, independent retailers. The difference today is that they’re doing it in the virtual world. The ‘High Street’ will soon be as redundant a concept as the ‘muffin man’ was in my childhood.

I’m glad that establishments like The London Wireless Company still exist. Most independent retailers have seen the writing on the wall and have at least some kind of presence online even if they don’t sell their products and services that way. I’d like to think that there will eventually be a backlash against internet retailing, but you can’t change people’s habits that easily and the habit of click and deliver (who wants to collect?) has already become deeply ingrained.

Let’s celebrate the old school while it’s still standing. Next time I’m in the market for hi-fi, The London Wireless Company will be my first port of call. I only hope it’s still there.