nickshanagher

People jump to conclusions often with little evidence to back up their decisions, Daniel Kahneman observes in his book Thinking Fast and Slow. “For some of our most important beliefs we have no evidence at all, except that people we love and trust hold these beliefs,” he writes. Independent retailers must bear this in mind as they read national newspapers. Expect to see all sorts of self-interested story-telling dressed up as truth. Some of this will damage your business. For example, discount retailers are now in fashion. “The more consumers are led to focus on price, the more we benefit,” Roman Heini, joint managing director of Aldi UK told the FT this week. Is it true? I don’t know. You have to make your mind up. Worse. Greens newsagents in the heart of Mayfair has shut its doors. After nearly 20 years of buying his newspapers and magazines there, Tyler Br û lé, the FT’s Fast Lane columnist was forced to shop elsewhere. “This small drama on Marylebone High Street repre...

Tyler Brûlé writes a column at the back of the FT every Saturday and talks about his hectic week shopping in Italy, partying in Tokyo, swimming in the Baltic, and so on. In other words his is a demographic most local shops will not have living near them... Even so, his advice to Stephen Clarke, the incoming chief executive of WHSmith, which used to dominate the UK magazine retailing market on its own, makes useful reading for a local retailer wanting to benchmark his business. Mr Brûlé's five point wish list is: print is not dead and you should broaden your range so that you are a place to discover new titles and not just to find the expected turn down the lighting a bit so your shops are warm and inviting add a bit of wood (oak or ash) experiment with a few smaller kiosks focussed on the best in print for high traffic sites better stationery please. If  Mr Clarke decides to pass on the ideas, perhaps you could make good use of them.

I was looking at the bench outside the village hall on Saturday evening as the local youth gathered, thinking how the faces change but the attitudes remain the same. The mood changes from bored, to sad, to rowdy, to occasionally menacing. Occasional trips to the local stores ensue, where their older siblings are often employed. Which brought to mind an article by up-market columnist Tyler Brûlé in which he discoursed about the bench outside his shop in Marylebone high street; how it activated the street and created a sense of community. He wrote: "One of the most valuable lessons we’ve learned since moving into the shopkeeping business last November is the importance of offering people a place to sit. The addition of a simple teak bench in front of our London shop a month ago has revealed a number of interesting facts about human behaviour and modern urban planning. The first is that the sheer number of men and women – both young and old – who take up a place on the bench to rest ...