Your Life Your Style versus Your Life Your Style

It’s a challenging time for shopkeepers. Retail sales are stagnant while costs are rising rapidly. And worst of all, I'm in competition with myself.
Let me explain. By day I’m Dr Jekyll running my shop Your Life Your Style in the centre of Winchester. As night falls, I become Mr Hyde the online entrepreneur with my website YourLifeYourStyle.co.uk. As Dr Jekyll, I’m a respectable member of the local community, paying rent and taxes that date from the economic boom, and actually serving real local people. As Mr Hyde, I can go like a mercenary wherever the costs are low- on an out-of-town industrial estate or an Enterprise Zone. I can even set up on the Channel Islands and sell my lower priced products free of VAT.
Mr Hyde’s online retail business also benefits from not needing a shop floor to display products or paying staff who stand around waiting for a customer. The work of picking and packing in a warehouse can be spread throughout the day (or would that be night in Mr Hyde’s case?). I say this knowing that online trading has challenges of its own- competition on a scale that a bricks-and-mortar shop never faces. It's a Wild West in which many manufacturers are joining in and selling direct to the public. The consequence is usually lower prices than shops charge, even allowing for shipping and the huge marketing costs involved in getting yourself noticed on the web.

Of course, my online business is run from the back of my Winchester shop so it doesn’t benefit as much as some but even so it’s far more profitable per square foot than the front end. I'm not alone in having a dual personality. There's hardly a shop business around that doesn't also trade online, trying to get a foothold on the new world before the old one crumbles beneath them. 

It sometimes seems inevitable that Mr Hyde will eventually stand alone across much of the retail landscape with Dr Jekyll retaining only a few flagship shops in key locations like London’s Oxford Street or Winchester’s High Street. My only hope for the good doctor and the many customers who still like to shop in person is a major revision of rents and rates to realistic levels. Of course I am writing these words of encouragement during the daytime. In a few hours, when darkness has descended, I fear my hands will once again be stained with shopkeepers' blood.
A version of this article also appeared on Wordpress

Your Life Your Style or Your Wife's Store Trial?

For years I thought Jimi Hendrix in the song Purple Haze said, ‘Excuse me while I kiss this guy’ when in fact it was the much less obvious ‘while I kiss the sky.’ I’m not alone- a survey last year showed that this was the second most misheard song lyric. The first being from REM’s Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight. You probably thought Michael Stipe sings ‘Calling Jamaica’- I know I did- whereas in fact he says very quickly ‘Call me when you try to wake her.’

By the way, did you know the Sidewinder referred to in the song is an old fashioned telephone, so called because it has a coiled cord like a Sidewinder snake? Probably not. Since none of us knew what the song was about anyway, I don’t think we can be blamed for getting the words wrong.

When you’re in business, clarity is vital, as it’s very easy to upset a customer with a wrong impression. I remember when I worked at a theatre, I received a complaint from a customer about the bad language used in front of children by the Fairy Godmother in apparently criticising the orchestra. I was puzzled, so I took a further look at the pantomime and heard the Fairy actually say, ‘What a funky band!’

It’s so easy to mishear what someone says. I still cringe at the time I was on the phone to my health insurance company about my hernia. ‘What size is it?’ said the woman on the other end of the phone. My mind raced over possibilities like a golf ball (too big) or a marble (too small) when the image of a quail’s egg popped into my head. I have no idea why- I don’t eat or even like quail’s eggs- and as soon as I said it I realised I sounded like the most pretentious snob. All the worse when she responded, ‘No, what side is it?’
These thoughts about mishearing came to me because of yet another thing I misheard last week. To give a bit of background, Winchester, where we are located, has a few problems with late night drunkenness, which is bad for our image and can be a physical threat to late night revellers. The presence of adults is known to calm situations down.

So I was pleased when one of our young employees at Your Life Your Style told me how she came out of a club late one night to be offered a cup of tea by some Christians. I thought she added ‘And Jews had coffee.’ Before I dwelt too long on the prospect of some wonderful multi-faith activity in which perhaps the Muslims were there too handing out cocoa, I realised she actually said, ‘and juice and coffee.’

It reminds me of a humorous greetings card I saw in which the wife is saying, 'You only hear what you want to hear' to which the husband responds, 'Thanks I'll have a beer.'

This article has also appeared on the Southern Daily echo website and on Wordpress