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July 4, 2024Back in February, the BBC News website reported a £100 million investment in Paisley’s High Street, widely considered one of Scotland’s most unfortunate shopping areas. It’d lost M&S, Argos, and even McDonald’s as commerce fled the town for online stores and retail outlets outside Paisley itself.
Ironically, research into the town’s demise discovered that Paisley simply had “too many” shops.
The plan, now, is to fill empty spaces with housing, offices, and art centres. Paisley Town Hall and Paisley Museum have been redeveloped, while some of the oldest businesses in the area have received fresh support.
The worry is that, as Paisley builds anew, the more traditional aspects of the town’s commerce start to seem anachronistic, as places out of time. Most would agree that’s a good thing – it’s character-building – but does business longevity actually matter to customers anymore?
“Cool and Relevant”
Woolworths in Paisley lasted between 1924 and 2009 before it was closed without ceremony and sold off with the rest of the business. Conversely, the century-old Houston Kiltmakers still exists at 67 High Street – and there’s no denying its age gives it a certain mystique.
As the barriers to starting a business have dropped since the dawn of the internet age, companies come and go like seasons, making a concept like longevity seem exotic – or, to be cynical, pointless for selling clothes, electronics, or furniture.
The boast simply isn’t as powerful as it used to be.
Arguably, consumers prize familiarity today, a trait that’s sometimes confused with loyalty. The fact that Amazon hasn’t been around that long makes no difference to people who shop at the store just because it’s the first thing that comes to mind.
Marketing Week once pointed to a business starting in a living room as the “cool and relevant” thing to talk about to younger shoppers, rather than when a company was formed. Who doesn’t know that Apple and Microsoft started in garages by now?
Respect for Elders
There’s still something to be said for longevity – even among web brands.
The CasinoStake website frames the Merkur Bets website as a trusted, established brand in the space by mentioning its original year of birth – 1957. Formerly known as the XTiP online casino, the fact that Merkur has only offered sports betting since 2020 seems less important, somehow.
A golden rule in online marketing does upset this idea, i.e. that new customers are more important than older ones, even though they can be around three times more expensive to attract. In industry parlance, acquisition beats retention every time.
Of course, companies try to keep all kinds of customers around but it’s no coincidence that special offers usually target newcomers. This is true in the casino industry, above. However, deposit bonuses are common in the latter regardless of how established a player is.
Respect for elders is bound to vary between different business areas.
Craft stores, like Houston Kiltmakers, get some of their appeal from having four generations of the same family running the shop – practice makes perfect – but an ultra-modern store will probably get more cachet from ethical practices and free shipping.