The View | The changing face of Hong Kong retail, from street life into high life
Walking out with your buys from a shop, apart from something you need instantly, might very soon become a thing of the past, even in this city’s local retail sector which is still stuck largely in the Middle Ages
They call the English a nation of shopkeepers, but the Sceptred Isle has nothing on the Pearl of the Orient for sheer retail therapy.
I can just about remember back to a geography lesson nearly 50 years ago (somewhat easier than remembering what I had for lunch) when we wandered down Lan Kwai Fong, mapping the location of metal-bashing shops, hardware stores, cooked food stalls and mom-and-pop groceries.
We marvelled that the same kind of shops all seemed to be co-located. Nowadays, functional affinity still applies, but the little shops have become bars and restaurants. Hong Kong retail been disrupted from street life into high life.
The brands have changed too, from a time when Lane Crawford hugged them all, to where the world’s best-known names, and many unknowns, sit side by side, paying some of the highest rentals in the world.
This surged at the time of the huge influx of rich mainland shoppers although, as I have previously noted, Hong Kong has recently lost its cool. Mainlanders now look to buy Gucci in Paris and Kate Spade in New York.
The chill wind of retail disruption has still to hit Hong Kong. Many of the larger retail chains around the world are taking a very different tack to their retail strategy, as their physical shops increasingly just become showrooms
Not just cool. The chill wind of retail disruption has still to hit Hong Kong. Many of the larger retail chains around the world are taking a very different tack to their retail strategy, as their physical shops increasingly just become showrooms. Clicks and mortar is certainly not a new concept but it is now startling obvious in other places how it is being played out.