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[raywilb]

 i wanted to buy a set of locking wheel bolts & tried local to me a couple of outlets, one which was halfords. all were around the £25 mark. i looked online & ended up paying £11 delivered to my door. ordered saturday & they arrived today. makes me wonder if halfords will end up like comet & the like. i do know on the few occassion i do go in halfords customers are very thin on the ground.

[Varche]

Last time I was in Britain , I thought the same thing. There was a time when the car park was packed.

People buying now on line, buying elsewhere from a shop cheaper OR not buying at all - no money?

I thought the same about PC world. Nipped in there for something for my Dads computer. Decided it would be cheaper off the net. I read somewhere that Amazon (fairly certain it was them) was going to look at opening high street shops - a bit like Argos , so people could look at certain goods before buying.

[mantahatch]

I have a slightly different experience. Oldest son wanted "sub and amp" in his car. Bought online cheaply and is pile of rubbish.
In desperation on Sunday afternoon went to Halfords and was met by 20 something year old who new far more about these things than we do. Took his advice and purchased new "sub and amp". Fitted in about 10 minutes as wiring already there, worked straight out of the box and only required minor adjustments to the switches on the "amp".

Now I probably would have got better advice from a specialist shop but considering it Sunday afternoon I think we did ok. And more importantly Halfords did good.

I hope they don't close as usually they are open late and at weekends. Motorfactors are ok (some of them) but have restrictive opening times.

 

[Rods2]

Successful retailer need to be clicks and mortar these days. I don't like PC World but they have got it right with their order online and get a discount pick up in store approach. More retailers to survive are going to have to do this.

At some point there is going to have to be a fundamental shift with shop v warehouse rents and this will be market driven, but more importantly shop v warehouse business rates and I feel that the Government will drag their heels on this so much that the  High Street will be dead before they do.

The next thing is going to be direct delivery from cheaper places abroad. I already order regularly stuff from Hong Kong and China on Ebay. How long will it be before we are all going more global to low cost / low tax countries.

Google, Amazon and Starbucks are also showing the way ahead by basing much of their operations and supplies in low tax / low cost countries. Ireland and Luxembourg and Cyprus have all shown the way in the EU with low corporation tax rates, where they have attracted multinational companies particularly for the US who are normally the global trend setters.