Wednesday 22 December 2010

I dreamed a dream.....

Whilst I continue to be full of flu, a little story for you on what is likely to be my final blog post of the year...

When See All Her Faces was a little girl, her dream was to own a sweetshop. Primarily to eat all the sweets. I realised that wasn't going to be a self-sustaining business, so I then decided I wanted to be a world-famous fashion designer. That didn't look like it was going to quite work out for me, so I set my sights on making the cover of London's ES magazine, for achievements not yet determined- but my self-imposed deadline for this also passed, so I revised my expectation downwards. I decided that I would be happy if I once, ever made it onto the Grazia Stylehunter pages- singled out for an impeccable outfit choice, thereby entitling me to feel that my fashion choices had the respect and acceptance of my fashion savvy peers. (I am only being slightly tongue in cheek I'm afraid)

And lo- and behold, my dream pretty much came true last week!! Well it does still count if it happened to the friend I was sitting next to, right? OK maybe not, but let me tell you about it anyway. Said friend was rocking a gorgeous £20 dress from the new Barbara Hulanicki range at George, similar to this:



N.B. You may have read about this new range (you can buy it online here ) earlier in the year. Barbara Hulanicki is better known as the founder of the iconic Biba brand of the 60s and early 70s that influenced fashion globally, and House of Fraser recently re-launched an exclusive Biba range, at fairly aspirational price points (you can find that here ) before Barbara promptly stuck two fingers up at the department store and  launched  her own range at Asda. At the time she told Drapers “I always find everyone who buys it [the Biba trademark] thinks of it as couture, but I think it is more like Woolworths – which is what it was always meant to be..[The House of Fraser collection] is too expensive... The prices [at Asda] are just amazing. “These [the George at Asda prices] are silly billy prices, which is what Biba is supposed to be. You go shopping, you buy your carrots, then you buy a dress.”


Anyway, back to the story. Towards the end of a long evening out in central London, just as we were about to admit defeat, my friend was approached by a proper trendy wendy. It transpired that the woman was a writer at Grazia magazine, and she spoke at considerable length about how amazing my friend's dress looked, and the general awesome-ness of her outfit. In fact she told me friend that she could easily get away with claiming it cost hundreds of £££s. Which I'm sure is true-but anyone can get a nice dress for £800. You need a real eye to find a fantastic dress for £20, so I think there is much more kudos in that.

And there you have it. Outfit approval from  style bible Grazia. Merry Christmas Jacqui you lucky thing.

Come Fly With Me (eventually)

I was supposed to be flying to Ireland from Heathrow on Sunday to see family for Christmas.
Which , as you will have guessed, didn't happen. And whilst I was probably the only person in the country holding airline tickets who was actually relieved by this news (I am full of flu so was going to have to miss it anyway) I'm no less horrified by the outcome. And I realise I am one of the lucky ones.

Yes apparently I'm going to get a refund on my original ticket. But in order to actually get to see the rest of my family before 2011 I have had to buy another ticket in the mean-time (the airline's website wasn't allowing me to simply change the dates of my original ticket like it was supposed to- good start), which, because of the laws of supply and demand (not much supply, plenty of demand) has cost me £75 more.


It seems to me like the airline are doing ok- they are making plenty of money by charging people more for tickets that are now something akin to gold dust. BAA (who run Heathrow airport) are also doing ok, because despite the moeny they may have lost over the past few days, they made pre-tax profits of nearly a billion last year (and spent only £500k preparing for the snow) so I think they will somehow pull through.

It seems like its the customers who have ended up with the short straw here. People who have missed their chance to go home for Christmas, who will not see family and friends at this important time of year. Customers who despite being organised and getting a reasonably priced ticket for December,  have not only been massively inconvenienced, and now have to pay through the nose to get home on another ticket.

Why aren't BAA (or the airlines) covering these additional costs? Why haven't they been coming up with more ideas/better ways to get people home?  They seem to simply have delivered the bad news and sat back, because they know they can. Or at least they think they can. Don't let BAA away with it, vote with your feet and fly from Gatwick next time- they spent £7m preparing for the snow and were operating at 90% capacity whilst Heathrow ground to a halt.

BAA- Bah humbug indeed.

Monday 6 December 2010

The social network

In a thrilling new development- Look for the See All Her Faces page on Facebook, and go and 'Like' it please..
Or become a Fan? not sure what the difference is yet.... but I'll be using it in conjunction with Twitter and this Blog to continue to share retail news, view and general observations.

Changing Faces..

Some statistics from the BBC to chew over- on the number of vacant stores in the UK and the nature of the remaining retail outlets, painting a fascinating picture of how both the downturn, and our evolving consumer habits, are changing the face of your local High Street.


So how accurately do you think this reflects your local High Street? Is it awash with supermarkets, discount stores, hairdressers and charity stores? I'd say this rather succinctly sums up those that I am familiar with.

Overall, shop vacancies are up from 10.5% to 14% this year report retail analyst Local Data Company, as the impact of the economic downturn continues to be felt,  but the rate of emptying stores is thankfully slowing down. A town I know well- Altrincham in Cheshire is, it transpires, the very worst individually hit town in the country- with 29.6% of shops empty. But if you know the area I'm sure you didn't need to be told this- the considerable decline of this formerly smart high street was obvious.

Somewhat unsurprisingly  off-licenses, and to a lesser degree travel agents have been particularly badly hit through the U.K.- well we all book our holidays online these days, and our booze from Tescos, so inevitable they are struggling.

The recession has however also contributed to the success of discount retailers such as Poundland, and of course the charity shops, who are able to operate profitably in tertiary sites where retailers might fear to tread, due to their low operating costs (it's easier when you have charitable status and don't have to pay your staff!).

The other interesting observation is that the nature of purpose of your High Street seems to be changing. It used to be the hub of the town, catering for your every purchasing need as you went about your week. Now we have huge supermarkets, shopping centres, and of course the internet to fulfil these requirements, cheaply and efficently. So the High Street becomes more of a hobby- a way to pass the time, providing those services that you simply cannot get online- as the butcher, baker and candlestick maker are replaced by the hairdresser, the coffee shop, and a Subway.

So what can we do? Well change is inevitable of course, but if you are lucky enough to still have a broad range of retail outlets on your high street, you simply must support them. The bookshop may be more expensive than Amazon, the wineshop might not do two for £10 like in Sainsburys, and the boutique might have a much narrower range than Topshop- but I tell you what- you'll miss them when they're gone.

Wednesday 1 December 2010

On the First Day of Christmas...

Happy First Day of Advent readers!

As an early gift to you I pass on a recommendation for a great website to add to your must-hit shopping saites. It's call Escentual and they offer an impressive range of  beauty products- fragrance, skincare, haircare, make-up, bath and shower etc, with the majority of the top brands, at very reasonable prices.

Now that's not such a big deal in itself, but here was what really clinched it for me- the little extras that really made my shopping experience feel special, and made me feel like a valued customer on only my first purchase.


The free delivery for purchases over £40 was a good start (easily spent on a beauty website!) but things got serious when they offered complimentary gift-wrapping with a personal message on the gift-tag. And then when I received my package this evening my joy was complete. A complementary yet very good quality nail file and sampler of a yummy new fragrance.

Little things yes- but compared to the impersonal and dismissive shopping experience the majority of e-commerce sites provide (why ARE they still charging for delivery when it is clearly a dis-incentive for shopping online?!) these all stacked up to result in one very happy shopper- and a willing advocate- the holy grail of retail.....