OPINION: Why Cowes town welcomes national names to the High Street
By Kate Kirby, Chair of Cowes Business Association
Cowes High Street has something for every palate and purse. Corporate brands can be controversial but we welcome them to our High Street offering. We have to ensure that we are constantly upgrading, maintaining and providing that USP for people to come to Cowes, as opposed to Ryde, Southampton or Portsmouth. Marks and Spencer has been a very welcome addition to our High Street and has generated its own clientele extremely quickly. This has benefitted other traders within the High Street, as shoppers can use the M&S car park whilst visiting other shops. It is important to always return to the individuality and diversity of Cowes High Street. It works because it isn’t wall-to-wall brands, although we do have names like Sainsburys, Slam, Fat Face, Musto and Henri Lloyd. They all trade well, but importantly, sit alongside individual offerings which keep Cowes fresh, exciting to visit and a pleasure to shop in. One other reason for Cowes High Street’s success is the amount of very good cafes, pubs, restaurant, bistros that we have dotted up and down the High Street.
There was a lot of opposition to the recent arrival of Costa Coffee into the old Bailey’s premises in the high street. A local campaign was led by prominent traders and concerned individuals as to the viability of yet another coffee shop, when the town of Cowes already had an offering of 27 outlets in which to purchase a cup of coffee. What was never considered by this group however, was the very real chance that a key premises, slap bang in the middle of Cowes, would have to become either a charity shop or a pound shop. The rent and rates on such a large premises would be far too rich for any sole trader or limited partnership to take on and sustain. Cowes prides itself on its individual shops which are diverse, sometimes eccentric, always unique and full of quaint charm. A pound shop or its equivalent instantly suggests a turndown in market value and worth, a high street that is struggling and a demographic of shoppers well below the A & B 1/2/3s that Cowes experiences now. Charity shops are a slippery slope for other businesses trying to trade either side of them. Well known charities have the ability to negotiate rents to their advantage as they can agree to 5 and 10 year deals. Landlords look on well-known names as a safe bet, often paying up front for a period of years and of course they incur no business rates.
Costa Coffee is newly opened and it’s too early to know how it will affect other businesses in Cowes. My view is human nature tries everywhere once, but if you have always enjoyed the third table on the left by the window in a coffee shop that you have been going to for the last two years, you are hardly likely to change just because a brand has arrived in town. What it may do is force businesses to look at their own offering and improve their game. This could be from better marketing and pushing of Isle of Wight products, to little extras such as a biscuit with your coffee to loyalty card deals. There’s no set solution in business – every case is different.
Kate Kirby is Chair of Cowes Business Association and runs an antiques and interiors shop in Cowes.
