When Sweet Pea Collectibles closed on 23rd December, it had been open for all of 206 days. Its demise reduces the recently increased number of antique & collectible outlets to four, though the pair on Clwyd Street haven't been open much (if at all) since Christmas. Sweet Pea was somewhat tucked away and its departure leaves the courtyard on the north side towards the top of Clwyd Street once again somewhat lonely.To be fair, Sweet Pea started as an adjunct to an internet business. Indeed, it still trades online where, I presume, it's more profitable as overheads are fewer. More and more people are prepared to trawl the internet for the vast range of collectibles for exactly what they want rather than browse in shops.
And there's the lesson. The last ten years have seen such a change in our shopping habits that the internet is now as much a threat to town centre "comparison" shopping as out-of-centre retailers (like Tesco) are to in-town to "convenience" stores. Since Lo-Cost (now Co-op) and then Tesco came, we've seen a steady reduction in "convenience" stores. Will the same be true of "comparison" shops, thanks to the internet?
It probably didn't escape your notice that, last week, HMV posted a profits warning, following poorer than expected Christmas trading and a seven per cent overall drop in sales during 2010. How can that be? HMV is the last high street multiple to sell DVDs and CDs. There's no longer *any* meaningful competition. Gone are MVC, Virgin, Zavvi, Border's, Woolworth's, the W H Smith record bar, Our Price, even the Boot's the Chemist record counters. Yet here we have the surviving high street media outlet in such trouble it's closing 40 stores. This is down to music downloads (legal or otherwise) and internet mail order through the likes of Amazon.
The last general record shop in Rhuthun closed at the turn of the century. It was called Aladdin's Cave at the back of Castle Mews where latterly there's been Amber Bridal and now another Choo Choo shop. Aladdin's Cave took its name from the former record shop in Well Street of the same name, that stopped selling records and cassettes in the late 1980s. Siop Elfair (and Trebor Hughes before it) sells specialist CDs in the medium of Welsh.
Rhuthun has never spawned a shop selling DVDs. True, you can get the chart CDs and DVDs in Tesco, but anything outside this limited range and, frankly, you have to go elsewhere.
You can buy clothes, often with free delivery and returns, online. Electrical products, too. Online book sales are so strong that HMV's parent announced the closure of 20 Waterstone outlets. And that's without mentioning the Kindle e-book reader. It seems that whatever you can find on the high street is now available to you online. If as a result, if organisations such as HMV and Waterstone's struggle, what chance have our independent traders, also fighting against retail parks and larger town centres.
Perhaps, like Sweet Pea and Tilly Mint, they ought to diversity online. If you can't beat them, join them. That might bring the world to our doorstep rather than the other way round. Rhuthun's greatest strength, of course, is its large stock of independent shops. If marketed well, this can provide something of an antidote to soulless retail parks and the rigidity, conformity & uniformity of city centres.