The very first post on this blog was 15 years ago, today. I started it because Tesco was rumoured to be moving into town.
Ah, Tesco. Remember the fuss? Once the hated and feared destroyer, the grim reaper of retail. How things change in 15 years. Financial and horse-meat scandals dented Tesco’s golden halo. Then, Tesco scaled back its once unstoppable expansion. We no longer talk of Tesco as the dominant force in British retail capitalism. Rather, that’s now reserved for Google and Amazon. These are the new pariahs. And, the new discounters are chipping away at Tesco, too. It’s these new supermarkets that have enough market share to be a real threat. This very month, construction starts for one such, even in Rhuthun. Who’d’ve thought it in a town once blessed with a lone KwikSave. This converted to Somerfield but soon fell to Tesco, when Tesco was all-conquering.
No longer are the TV documentaries or broadsheet columnists making mention of Tesco’s ruinous impact. Somehow, Tesco no longer seems to matter. It’s almost as if Tesco’s now an also ran. In fact, Tesco's hardly ever mentioned on the Blog, either. There's more important things to say.
Meanwhile, in Rhuthun, Tesco is firmly part of everyday life. It certainly altered the landscape in terms of the town’s convenience retailers. We have no greengrocer, only one newsagent (which remains up for sale) and only two butchers. Let’s not forget, though, that the writing was on the wall in 1992 after Lo-cost arrived.
But there are new threats, now. One is our self-destructive tendency to shop for comparison goods outside Rhuthun itself. The less the choice in town, the more we travel away. The other, of course, is online retailing. This has chomped at even large city centres (look at Chester). It’s wiped out a fifth of Wrecsam. Wrecsam’s Eagles Meadow was once confident enough to be the future of local retail. How things change in just 10 years. In the 15 years since the blog, it’s our changing habits and our changing cultures that have the greatest impact on our town, much less the supermarket we tend to patronise. In Rhuthun, as elsewhere, we vote with our feet and with our keyboards and with our smartphones.
The unholy combination of smartphone tech and clever software has brought about another cultural change. Facebook is only just older than this Blog. Not that many would have known about "The Facebook" 15 years ago. In many respects, Facebook has made the Rhuthun/Ruthin Blog superfluous. Yet, if I once felt that damaging public comments on the Blog were divisive and destructive, they were nothing compared to the bile for a time apparent on FB.
To be continued tomorrow @ 5a.m.
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Meanwhile, in Rhuthun, Tesco is firmly part of everyday life. It certainly altered the landscape in terms of the town’s convenience retailers. We have no greengrocer, only one newsagent (which remains up for sale) and only two butchers. Let’s not forget, though, that the writing was on the wall in 1992 after Lo-cost arrived.
To be continued tomorrow @ 5a.m.