As a small business delivery man, John Gregg saw the potential of taking traditional foodstuffs directly to people. Later, in 1951, a shop opened in Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne, and launched it as a brand.
Photo credit: Greggs.
Present Day
It’s now a chain. It’s a leader in baked goods, having over 2,600 stores in the UK. It sells a wide variety of food and drink to customers as a convenient high street outlet.
Distinctives
Greggs is a popular cultural brand. It’s listed on the London Stock Exchange (GRG). It has a dominant position with ambitions for expansion, and growth.
Selfridges opened in London in 1909. It was a first of its kind. The capital didn’t have a shopping experience like it, and as the first location for Harry Gordon Selfridge’s new venture, it took on a life of its own.
Present Day
Now, shopping in London is still a big draw for many of its visitors. Selfridges keeps a position at the top. It stocks the best brands, and sells the luxuries that make it onto most wish lists.
Selfridges & Co.
Distinctives
A trip into its multi-level site on Oxford Street is an oasis of calm and a chance for shopping TLC. The seasonal sales bring in crowds that fill out its many halls. There’s never a dull moment.
A walk into a bookshop is a pleasure for a large part of the shopping population. It’s more than picking up a book. It’s the delight of finding a new genre or discovering a new author. There’s so much on offer.
A branch of Waterstones in Reading is a similar experience to many independent bookshops. It also has lots of gifts, cards, and trinkets on offer for those that want an extra treat to put into their shopping bags.
The diversity of opinion, outlook, and thought is impressive. The number of female authors is rising too. If you thought J K Rowling hadn’t inspired writers to follow in her footsteps, you’d be proved wrong easily.
The paperback market is an eclectic one. There are many different genres of books trending among the reading public. The kids books range is impressively broad. It takes into account a very diverse readership.
Burberry has come on leaps and bounds in the fashion industry since its inception. It started with outdoor clothing and helped labourers to brave the elements. In time even Sir Earnest Shackleton saw the merits of Thomas Burberry’s company.
Present Day
Burberry’s modern style – YouTube
Its clientele is now broader and has a trendy look with a useful style. The fortunes of the business increase and ebb on the back of consumer habits. It has a less settled place in popular tastes than its practical origins. It has to innovate its survival now.
Distinctives
The brand is popular among affluent classes. It’s prized in particular for its coats, and other winter apparel. Its appearance on fashion runways positions it as a leading brand. It’s publicly listed as Burberry Group plc (BRBY.L). It’s based in London.
The Office for National Statistics has brought out positive news for the UK economy. The retail sector has seen a bounce back since pandemic-era changes in consumer habits.
According to data Visa shared with the ONS, popular outlets are doing quick business. It means lunchtimes and early afternoons are back, and tills ring out in a chorus of approval.
I took an underground train to West Brompton station in London, yesterday, and photographed and videoed as I walked through.
It’s an interesting part of London; a small neighbourhood, and a tranquil place to walk and pace yourself on an afternoon out.
I say ‘tranquil’, because there’s also a surprising lack of activity. I say that, also, in view that many of its shop fronts have now been transformed, and look like houses, and not commercial spaces.
These are examples of what is happening – and seen – across the country, and all across our towns and cities.
I do not bemoan the arrival or emergence of phone or vape shops, for example, as these exhibit simplicity that we need. I like them because they are what I can head for in a straightforward way and makes my shopping experience easier, at least.
It’s simple to find a phone shop these days, and to find what you want. It should be the case everywhere, and with everything.
In times past, we have prospered over the simple things in life that brought us income and wealth. It wasn’t someone’s idea that we could ‘sell’ to the world, but staples that we brought in and sent out (sometimes in a stylised way).
It’s our ideas that keep us here, but our trade that gets us places, and this is the truth with footfall. If there is sufficient here to engage the mind, and to open the wallet, it’s sufficient to get us out and about again.
I don’t know if West Brompton or beyond seeks an answer as to its streets lined with houses in former shop units, as it may want that, but I doubt it’s nice to live around if what someone wants is a coffee, or a grocery shop to visit, or even an arcade, or something, to browse around.
We are people who ‘look’, and it beats television, sometimes.
The country has many byways and highways in it, and you’d expect differences between where you live, and where someone else does.
I’ve been looking keenly at the ‘state’ of our streets for a while now, and it seems that – actually – we have similar if not the ‘same’ places to live as each other.
If it comes to shopping, our tree-lined rows, or the amenities we have that are in walking distance, it’s remarkably similar.
I’ve lived (or stayed) in more than a few places with names you may recognise. These are towns and cities you may have visited before, to meet up with friends, or shop in a mall, or a precinct, somewhere.
The brands that we have are mostly familiar (which is great if we need a Costa latte pick-me-up), and the layouts are reassuringly simple.
I’ve met folks who’ve told me that they appreciate it because it means they can get around easily, and are not confused by a layout that doesn’t make sense.
We’re not all the same when it comes to “needs and greeds”. So, it’s because our town and city centres are so appropriate for us, that we’re able to find our own little corners and use them for an hour or two, on whatever we want.
This is what we get to enjoy as an afternoon out, for ourselves.
It’s a part of our way of life to keep doing this, but it’s also human, too, in that we’d do it, anyway, even if it weren’t already here, for us.
This is how we live, in other words.
It isn’t clear cut how each of us will decide to use our time this weekend, for example.
It’s someone’s pleasure to stay at home and read, or another’s to cycle in a rural area at breakneck speed.
This is all our choice.
I’ve also noticed we’ve made choices in other ways, too, in the sense of staying local and living local.
There are differences of opinion of how things should look, where things should be, etc.
Take a look, by example, at these photos I took this morning;
Picture #1Picture #2
I happened to be walking past a line of houses, and saw this load of rubbish around a perfectly ordinary terraced house.
It isn’t clear why it’s there, in the first place, but it’s a fact that it is. It must have been there for a while.
It’s not evidence of carelessness, but a sense of confusion over why things are happening – or not happening – in the way we think they naturally should.
It’s about how I think life should be, and why particular things don’t match up to my perception of life as it should be, here.
I suppose most things do, now, because I have those expectations.
Yet, as most of us interested in the way things are, ask, what about the rest?
Maybe up a stream, and far away, onto someone’s plate, but those ‘air miles’ don’t count for the kind of prestige a fish might want in its native stream.
It’s a different matter entirely when people are out on the hunt, however, and want more from life – and the life around them.
This is where salmon lose their footing, of course.
In recent times, the salmon at Fortnum & Mason have come under their own criticism, as well.
Salmon fishing at Fortnum & Mason
Far from a river, and far from their habitat, they also have an indignity levelled over their implicit quality.
The Daily Mail reported a story recently about its fish being questioned at the store in Piccadilly, over their heritage.
It seems odd, to bring it up like that, but people want their facts (and a decent dinner, too!), so they’ll go extra lengths find out whatever it is they need to know.
It raises issues over everyday items that we’re used to; where they come from, and what to expect, now that the law is more aware of these things.
This is the stuff of shopping, after all, and of normal, everyday living.
The law can’t ignore it.
There’s nothing to stop an average fish-loving man, partial for a bit of salmon, from asking a few questions, and making a few inquiries about it.
It keeps our salmon the best it can be, and makes our shopping experience easier, too.
