Home deliveries Small Beer? Heineken doesn't think so, is this another blow to the High Street retail model?

Heineken, deliveries now reaching the parts other beers are apparently not

We have seen recently the demise of BHS, from a High Street presence to an ethereal on-line business model.

The loss at BHS of 164 stores and 11,000 staff, replaced by likely a single large warehouse and perhaps 100 staff in an Amazon-like model, shows how the jobs market is contracting and business is changing.

The writing is on the wall, you need an on-line presence or you are unlikely to survive, unless you have exclusivity and a loyal customer base. But you'd be in the minority.

The way business is changing its operating mode, is all contributing to the 9 million job losses by 2026 we are faced with, thanks to automation, robotics and changing business practice models, retail included.

The late Sir John Harvey Jones

an opponent of 'least cost option' business models

Lean practice 'least cost options' are the barrel scrapings that should be a wake up call to businesses, if they are in that state, then they are in trouble. If they are not growing and retaining staff, they should take note.

I see a fair number of the same jobs advertised time and again and the question is why? Is the company that prosperous and growing it needs to meet demands, or is it a crap place to work for and managed by tossers with no idea what they are doing?

Anyway, back to the script and here's a new business model for the on-line age.

Now Heineken is proposing home deliveries in the London area within 20 minutes of order, direct to the customer's home from direct sales on-line. Will other manufacturers follow suit?

So what impact will this have on the retail drinks trade, which I worked in many years ago and for other companies and retailers, how will this impact on their markets?

If successive drinks brands for example adopt this model, the small, independent wine and spirit retailers could be faced with the choice of going totally on-line or hanging on to their walk-in trade model, if that is viable.

My old drinks trade employer did home deliveries in the shop locales and also to local businesses and restaurants, this was back in the pre-internet era when life was so much less complicated. This business has since ceased trading.

We have seen chains such as Threshers, one of our old customers, cease trading too, perhaps due to the availability of drink sold through supermarkets, who have better purchasing power and greater opening hours availability.

If this High Street trade ceases, the questions will be what will happen to the old premises, the people who have lost jobs and the future for the High Street?

The answers look to be a growth in on-line living, proxy living will order your food and drink for you, jobs will be lost and alternatives needed and the High Street will cease to exist as we know it.

Basic Income Guarantee payment will have to come in to provide the financial safety net, perhaps people will be freed up to cottage industry styles of work.  

So we are now seeing the tangible results I have long been predicting coming into play. We must without delay review our way forward so that we can have some idea how we will live in the future.

These changes may like small beer today, but we are only seeing the start of things.

BHS goes on-line - why this makes sense - the cost savings are staggering and the model is bad news for the jobs market

BHS is no more on the High Street and is now going on-line.

What are the implications of this trend?

The shock news of BHS's demise has been compounded by the decision to relaunch this business, in an on-line format only.

This raises the question why, if it couldn't make the High Street pay? Because the High Street retail business model is becoming too expensive. Bricks and mortar, rents, staff costs, retail staff not selling all the time in the main.

Lets look at some costs and facts.

Shop assistants might largely not be engaged in selling

for most of each working hour they are employed.

Suit you...

If we show some basic figures, we can see the benefits of changing to on-line only retail model.

We will use the quoted figures from the BHS wiki page of 11,000 employees and 164 stores, all other figures are estimated and for example only.

If you had 11,000 employees on the High Street, On-line you might exist with as few as 100.

At an example of paying £15,000 per employee, this could cost you:

£165,000,000.00 for 11,000 employees at £15,000.00

£1,500,000.00 for 100 employees at £15,000.00

Big saving.

Operating stores 164, value estimate £82,000,000.00 in bricks and mortar

Warehouse operation, value estimate £3,000,000.00 as a big shed

Neither value includes retail stock. Based on outright ownership.

Big savings all round and headache for Landlords if only leased and you do not renew.

The largest cost of a business is staff, which is also its best asset, apart from a good product or service.

Bean counters preferring the 'least cost option' are going down the 'on-line' approach and scaling back the retail 'boots on the ground.'

Many retail place jobs are being advertised as part-time only these days and they are

'optimising the staff to be there when the customers are' as the key driver.

Unlike the motor trade which relies on big profits from single sales, they can afford to have someone hanging about for 63 hours a week on low pay as they will make it up on commission.

Retail in shops is a different animal. Usually, multiple sales of lower value products.

The jobs problem is being hit by a double whammy

Yes, the real casualty of the BHS crash was the 11,000 employees hit by the sudden loss of their jobs.

They are in a poor position, having to enter a job situation that has been slowly sucked dry over the years.

The problem is that by 2026, 9 million jobs will have been lost to automation. That will not happen all at once, but is happening right now and the effects are being felt greatly.

Even 5 years ago the jobs market was healthier than now.

The 'record job vacancies' level is a false flag, the victim of vacancies being multiply counted as they appear on multiple agency and job sites.

When you scale down a work force 90+%, that was a fair size to start with, that is a real problem for those looking to get employed and quickly.

Many of the jobs that were there 5 years ago just are not now.

A vast swathe of lower end jobs right up to degree level jobs have vanished.

And that is also the problem perpetuated by the out of date education system we have, which is running on an irrelevant sausage machine mentality model.

The jobs they are educating children for now just won't be there by the time they leave school. The technical skills needed to fill the skills gap are unfilled too.

Basic Income Guarantee  will have to take the place of Benefits

Because the jobs won't be out there to fill

The reality is that this creeping automation has been put to one side and not looked at, even though Norbert Wiener identified this situation as being likely over 60 years ago.

The Pick and Pack on-line model of retail is now the way things are going and it is sadly seeing off the High Street players one by one.

Employers who fail to read CV's and covering letters properly - I could have been a contender!

Potential Employers who don't

You might see an ideal job advertised and think 'I can do that.'

So you get your CV ready and maybe adjust it to suit and write a really good covering letter.

You might be lucky and get an interview, or never hear from the company.

Recently, about 3 months ago, I applied for a job and sent the CV and covering letter, carefully outlining my relative experience to the role, including practical workshop and repair experience gained over eleven years.

I got a reply, thanks but no thanks.

Funnily enough, as things go, the job came up again 3 months later. So I applied again. This is often the case, an employer takes the least cost, least qualified option and finds a few months down the line they need to advertise the job again, rather than do the sensible thing.

Anyway, I saw the same job come up again, so I sent in the CV and covering letter. I had a contact from the company and phoned them up.

The person there I spoke to said the reason they had not interviewed me before was due to a lack of engineering experience. So I said I had eleven years of repairs, electrical, hydraulic and mechanical , all things this company dealt with.

It was obvious that the company had neither read the CV or letter properly, either time. It also became apparent that the CV reader had no technical experience themselves and had not looked to see what one thing they did not know about was. Not the first time I have had this.

It just makes me wonder, how many other jobs have I missed out on because people don't read the CV or covering letter properly?

After Big Data, Robotic inter connectivty will mean Proxy Living for Humans will be the next stage of our existence

Big Data Proxy Robots - meet your new workers

We hear a lot of guff about 'Big Data' and the reality of this subject is that Big Data is big business.

Every time you check out at the supermarket, that barcode scanner is building a profile of you and your consumption.

Big Data users report satisfaction with the results it produces for them

So to whom is that data useful? Many.

Apart from Supermarkets gathering data on your purchase history, companies like Amazon and Ebay analyse your browsing and purchasing to use algorithmic self-marketing targeted at what you look at and things you might like to look at. Things you might like to buy, more importantly.

When the refrigerator of the future can 'talk' to the Internet about your fridge contents, how they are used or rot, is useful to Supermarkets and Growers.

Low hanging fruit - harvested by Agrobots

spelling the end for migrant pickers

The base end of the scale, in agriculture, is now embracing robotic workers to pick produce on a constant cycle operational basis, selecting for harvesting produce at optimum condition, it reduces waste and enhances profits lost to waste from 'off' products.

This is the infancy. The world is becoming more connected across many markets.

So where is this going next? Proxy living.

Automation and Robotics are cutting a swathe into our human jobs world. Norbert Weiner, the early computer scientist and modern cybernetician saw the danger to human employment from computer automation of work processes in the infancy of modern computing in the wake of WW2.

Think of our traffic signals, automated, train signalling, mostly automated, air traffic control, mostly automated. We are steadily relinquishing control to machinery as it becomes more reliable and safer. Google cars are in the vanguard of automated driving.

The ghost workers - ethereal servants

Where do we go next with all this? Proxy living.

As we embrace the digital enormity of the future, we can dispense with the crap in our lives, all the trivia of paying for this, renewing that, can be done by machines, on our behalf, by proxy.

We no longer will have to endure the sales calls, the pop up marketing, the dross, because we will build technology to do that and let us just get on with our lives. Not interrupted.

The jobs market is set to lose 9 million jobs in the UK

Permanently - lost to automation

Fundamentally, we Humans have to change for the imminent future upon us.

Education is modelled on a largely out of date 'sausage machine' type of system. It no longer serves. It no longer will serve a jobs market where 9 million jobs will disappear over the next 10 years.

We need to fill a skills gap that It diplomas can't staunch nor every man or woman having a degree. A risk averse society has been created by health and safety cranks, who have filled a void in the unemployables sector now that the racism industry has become redundant to ethnic minority discrimination and white indigenous people are crying racism.

A cheaper Benefits model than the DWP must be introduced

We need people that can change a tap washer and make things. We need the DWP to become a more skills and training based unit, it is not serving the current demands, it needs to provide real skills not half arsed work placements in situations that just fill a gap on a CV.

To take the place of the lost jobs, a Basic Income Guarantee system of say £12k a year paid to everyone over 16 will have to come in.

It will be cheaper to administer than the current DWP system which spends £389 million dispensing around £17 million in unemployment payments. Hardly a good business model.

In one sweep, we can brush away a hugely bureaucratic and top heavy department and replace it with a skills and training operation that encompasses Technical Schools from age 12 and allows people to pursue what they are good at, rather than just having an income to survive.

Humans will be freed up by machines, to do things that give them value, rather than be just wage slaves doing menial work. Self improvement colleges and groups will be the future, to upskill Humans which will provide its own economy to take the place of the High Street.

Retail is being driven off the High Street.

Think about your last 5 purchases, how many were made in person interacting with another Human? Maybe 1. That is why the High Street is dying a slow death.

Jobs that were there in companies 5 years ago are now not there.

The 'record number of job vacancies' are largely due to double counting and worse, with a job perhaps appearing on 5 or more job sites, it will be counted as 5 rather than the 1 it actually is.

Our future is not bleak. If it is managed properly, it will be good.

It needs to be managed by professionals not by blundering amateurs.

The times for amateurs in Government is over.

Our future rides on it.