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Feedback: In Conversation With Theo Paphitis
A New Dawn For Retail
Below: Theo Paphitis was interviewed by Mark Faithfull, editor of World Retail Congress at Autumn Fair. Bottom: Taking questions.
Retail entrepreneur Theo Paphitis took to the stage at Autumn Fair in September, telling a packed audience, “I can only see opportunities for physical retail to start growing and prospering again.” With lower business rates and rents, and a consumer hunger for hybrid retail and convenience shopping, Theo confirmed that he was feeling very upbeat about retail’s future. PG&H was in the front row to find out more. Theo Paphitis was in a very bullish mood when he stepped onto the stage at Autumn Fair in September. Fresh from a six week break, where he said that he had time to reflect and take stock, he was brimming with confidence that retail was ‘through to the other side’. “If it hadn’t been for Covid, it may have taken another five years to see the transformation, the rebirth of retail,” he stated. “However, what Covid has done is to accelerate everything by at least five years, achieving that rebirth in 18 months,” he told attendees.
“You have to imagine that retailers have been on a massive travelator, with the direction of the travelator going backwards, while retailers have been trying to look forwards. We’ve been walking, and walking faster, but the travelator’s been going faster and faster - and backwards. Retailers have therefore been jogging, but in the end it’s been full pelt just to survive. And when the travelator was going backwards, if you didn’t go fast enough you fell off, with some great household names in retail doing just that, retailers who weren’t able to run fast enough
in the opposite direction to the direction of the travelator.” He cited Top Shop, Top Man and Debenhams, pointing out that retailers such as Comet and Woolworths were among those that had fallen off the travelator early on. “The reason was that they couldn’t travel fast enough,” he emphasised. “And today, even John Lewis is having to run at full pelt to keep up. But we are finally through to the other side, because Covid has forced the travelator to slow down.”
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