The decline of the High Street is not news to anyone. Once bustling retail spaces are now coffee shops, restaurants, or abandoned and empty units. What used to be a melting pot of local trade and a community hot spot, has now become a shadow of what it once was. But can the High Street be saved? It can, and the answer lies with robots.
The internet is largely at fault for the High Street’s death. E-commerce was a great disruptor, but recent warning signs indicate its own demise. Is the disruptor being disrupted? In the UK, for example, online retailers such as Boohoo, Asos, and Amazon have reported a dip in their e-commerce sales, while Waterstones, Superdrug, Sainsbury, and Marks & Spencer among others have reported more people shopping in-store.
There are several reasons why online retailers have faced declining sales and share prices. The Covid-19 pandemic, labour shortages, and global political unrest have been wreaking havoc on supply chains and therefore a business’s ability to fulfil orders. An Oracle survey showed that following the pandemic, 91% of consumers reported taking the supply chain into consideration when making a purchase, an increase from 45% prior to 2020.
Another reason is that Covid did not accelerate the shift to online shopping as much as previously expected. Despite the pandemic-induced spike in e-commerce sales, recent ONS findings show online retail sales to have returned to their pre-pandemic growth trajectory. This normalising of the e-commerce bubble indicates a consumer desire to return to the store.
There is no time to waste, High Street retailers must start capitalising on changing consumer behaviour by modernising, automating, and competing back.
The High Street opportunity
The opportunity comes in the form of local warehouses, served by robots, linked to more old-fashioned physical retail settings. Even when orders are fulfilled on time, the growing trend in returns is hitting retailers hard. Boohoo recently blamed disappointing profit projections as partially the fault of higher levels of customer returns.
The cost of returning goods is reducing businesses’ already thin margins to unsustainable levels and reducing those costs continues to be a top investment priority for IT and supply chain leaders. It also creates problems for the customer – most readers will be privy to the hassle and frustration involved in returning or swapping an item.
Local warehouses or micro fulfilment centres offer the solution to the drawbacks that come with online shopping. If the customer needs to return or swap their purchase, they can have the choice of posting it back or taking it back in person. Making stores increasingly part of the fulfilment process, serving customers where they want to be, while simultaneously improving online fulfilment allows retailers to offer their customers ever more choices.
As for the vendor, due to the reduced distances in delivering the item and facilitating returns, the costs involved in delivering and handling returns are diminished significantly. It also helps with a business’s carbon footprint. The effect of shortening the transportation journey, at scale, cannot be underestimated.
Robots incoming
The concept of centralised storage and distribution isn’t new – Argos has operated like this for years. But what is new is the technology. Queue the robots.
Prior to robots, labour for small, local warehouses was often costly. The cost advantages experienced when spread over a larger amount of goods are one of the foremost reasons why warehouses have traditionally been so large. Robots are the game-changer here. When the necessity of human labour is removed, the cost of operating a warehouse efficiently is transformed.
Automating a warehouse with robotics presents a myriad of benefits for retailers. However, this year’s Supply Chain Report revealed a disconnect between what supply chain and tech leaders want from their retailer’s supply chain investment strategies and where the money is being directed. Whilst warehouse robotic automation was identified as having the biggest impact on transforming the supply chain, a significant 38% reported their retailers were not taking advantage of the solution in their supply chains.
Robots in the warehouse mean orders can be fulfilled with no downtime, and their flexibility and scalability enable businesses to avoid over-producing and overpaying in their warehouses and distribution centres. With the introduction of RaaS (robot-as-a-service), robotic devices can be leased and accessed through a cloud-based subscription service, granting even small- and medium-sized businesses access to the benefits of such equipment.
Additionally, AI robotics can be deployed to create improved stock control, thereby helping local warehouses anticipate customer demand more accurately and reducing the need to have large warehouses.
In a nutshell, the adoption of robotics helps to increase warehouse productivity, reduce order fulfilment time, and provide consumers with a full suite of options in where and when they collect or return an item.
Imagine the potential
The potential to use robots and AI to reimagine the High Street has never been better positioned than it is currently.
A micro fulfilment centre could exist on the top floor of a former large store that no longer has use for so much space. In this reimagined store, a myriad of opportunities is created for the vendor to upsell and for the customer to experience a higher convenience of shopping.
No longer will ordering online have to mean waiting days or even weeks for a product to arrive, only for it to be left with the neighbour when no one’s home. Returning or swapping an item will not have to involve the hassle of posting it back only for the refund or replacement to arrive much later.
Visiting the High Street could incorporate the community experience that it once did, rather than just a place to grab a quick coffee. Cafes and restaurants could be supported by flourishing local trade happening right on their street.
It’s a wonderful image – a High Street that inspires us to rethink a future, backed by automated warehouses, that support, not clutter the aesthetics of a dynamic High Street.
