Mobile Shopping - no wifi needed

City Centres may be deserted due to a large number of people still working from home,

but lets not pretend that the great British High Street wasn't in trouble in the world now widely known as BC. A huge shift to online shopping during lockdown has meant the problem is even bigger, while pure-play online retailers have their own often under estimated over-heads they do avoid the crippling city centre rent & rates of the high street stores, plus they are open 24hrs a day.

The high street is just one side of the shopping world, away from the main street up and down the country there are a raft of Boutiques fighting for survival, Boutique shopping has always been so appealing to me, being able to shop multiple brands in one place and that the edit of each boutique is always slightly different due to the “handwriting” of the buyer whose personal taste is always going to influence what they choose.

The problem boutiques have is to stay away from big rates they aren't on the high street, but they still need a high foot-fall (a lot of people to shop there) to ensure they can keep the stock moving and keep it looking fresh for the next time you visit, its a tough gig if you have a great boutique local, use it or lose it.

I recently stumbled on a retailer who looked like they had the solution to the lack of interesting product in my town centre, The Gypsy Truck is run by a Barcelona based woman who every summer de-camps to Ibiza with her truck full of clothing to sell, from designer to vintage and everything in between, instead of waiting for the customer to come to her, she takes the merchandise to them.

I call it a market, but the modern name is a pop-up, whereby the shops aren't permanently tied to rent and we get to experience different shops that visit our city for a limited time frame, ensuring the retailer gets fresh eyes on their stock every week, in her case holiday makers who are only there for a week or two, I believe mobile shops are the perfect solution to our shopping lethargy, i just need to convince one or two of my favourite boutiques its the way forward.