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18/08/2006, 1:59 AM ROBERT Joined on 16/08/2003 NR Gt. Yarmouth Posts 3,602 Re: Chapelfield Shopping Centre: Dissertation Research in Norwich Chapelfield maybe one mall to late, for norwich............ The internet is a faster growing shopping market which by 2010 will impact more than many will realise. Each generation will do shopping in a different way, like home supermarket deliveries can be cost affective to some and time saving to others. Not so much a factor 5 years ago but used by many today.  Royal Mail and other carriers deliver a growing amount of packages and parcels from shopping outlets and E-Bay. In fact many shops have internet sites which clearly says that buy on line, and it will be cheaper than the store price. The internet is now the new home shopping catalogue which not ownly covers England but the world, on nearly any item you may wish to buy. Chapelfield may get people out and about to walk through, find an item you like and purchase it at home on the internet at massive reductions in some cases. A couple of years and many family computers can pay for themselfs on the savings made with on line purchases ....... One simple example ... I bought a digi camera 1 month ago a Cannon powershot A540,  Jessops price £228 ...    Rankhour.com  £155 nextday delivery .....a SD 1gb memory card for the camera,  Jessops £52, ASDA £38. 7dayshop.com £11..... I bought the camera from Rankhour.com and the SD1gb card from 7dayshop.com,  saving over £100 on the Jessops price that many will PAY at Jessops now, without realising the savings to be made on line... Chapelfield will in time, struggle to servive with growing competion from computers on line, one of which you are reading this posting from... "Has Norwich City Council’s Decision to Develop the Chapelfield Shopping Centre Been Justified?"  Well one would think that there is enough shops already in Norwich, more of the same will bore people in time, I suppose it`s somewhere to go for a walk round if you have nothing else to do.......little interest to people like me who only go to norwich shops when they have to, or more so to the Theatre Royal each year.....      Report

18/08/2006, 2:37 PM C C Joined on 21/08/2003 Posts 1,321 Re: Chapelfield Shopping Centre: Dissertation Research in Norwich I have to agree with Robert. I've not visited Chapelfield. Not because I could give tuppence about change but anything I need can be bought considerably cheaper and more conveniently online. I did pop into the Castle mall recently for an eye examination. However although a certain opticians there will knock you a new pair of specs in an hour or so. which although I like the idea of. (one visit and job done) They charge way too much compered to buying prescription glasses on line from about £25. So I wonder if the City can sustain two malls. The way things are changing I don't think so.    Report

19/08/2006, 11:49 AM Edd Joined on 13/11/2004 Norfolk Posts 7 Re: Chapelfield Shopping Centre: Dissertation Research in Norwich Thanks Robert, Bigfish and CC, all valid comments indeed. Sorry i've been away for a few days so i appologise for the late reply. Thanks for your comments, what is interesting in particular is the monoculture of shops that existed before the Malls came to Norwich. Yes Chapelfield has increased retail space in Norwich but all that it has added are more monoculture shops. It is of course, unrealistic to expect a large shopping mall to be filled with local shops but unlike Castle Mall, it is totally void of any local shops. However, I must stress that i'm not trying to give a negative impression of Chapelfield, instead i'm looking at whether the Chapelfield is justified, if it is, then great. I think that if it were to increase visitors from outside Norfolk then this would surely benefit exisiting retail units in Norwich and soften any impact that Chapelfield may have on them. Today in the EDP it has been reported that House of Fraser is showing signs of customers regularly travelling over 80miles to shop at its store in Norwich. This is what Chapelfield needs to achieve to be fully justified. The second topic of internet shopping is also crucial to the success of Chapelfield. Retail nationally is feeling the pinch, how much of it is down to the internet? Quite a bit i would presume. Why would people want to travel such vast distances (from Colchester etc) to shop at Chapelfield when most of the stores have online shopping facilities. I will, in due course, be interviewing the City Council, to see whether they have taken this into account when they justified the planning of Chapelfield. Thanks again for all your comments, it is providing me with plenty of qualitative analysis. Regards, Edd Smith    Report

19/08/2006, 12:44 PM keith gerrard Joined on 16/04/2004 Posts 11,322 Re: Chapelfield Shopping Centre: Dissertation Research in Norwich Retailing is feeling the pinch because England's economy has been replaced by the retail greed barons and they are now in the process of getting rid of local labour and replacing it with foreign cheap labour. Slowly the indigenous people of Norfolk will have less and less income to buy any of the bells and whistle rubbish on sale at Chapelfield. Foreigners send most of the money home and visitors don't want the rubbish anyway. Dream on keithgerrard@gerrard24.freeserve.co.uk    Report

19/08/2006, 1:50 PM Delboy Joined on 15/08/2003 Posts 5,089 Re: Chapelfield Shopping Centre: Dissertation Research in Norwich The opening of the £250m Chapelfield complex has propelled Norwich into the country's top five places to shop and cemented the city's status as the region's retailing capital. A year after it opened, new figures reveal it is attracting shoppers from as far afield as Colchester and Bedford - turning Norwich into a major commercial rival to London's Oxford Street and the Bluewater shopping centre in Essex. Quoting from today's EDP. What a load of retailing hype. There is only a finite amount of cash to be spent and all that has happened is that the money which would have been spent is just the same but spread more thinly on the ground. Not only that the  internet sales have seriously damaged the shop outlets, in fact one trader I use will offer the same price in their shop as on their web site and includes delivery charges. The EXPERT knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing .    Report

19/08/2006, 10:34 PM ROBERT Joined on 16/08/2003 NR Gt. Yarmouth Posts 3,602 Re: Chapelfield Shopping Centre: Dissertation Research in Norwich The opening of the £250m Chapelfield complex has propelled Norwich into the country's top five places to shop and cemented the city's status as the region's retailing capital. A year after it opened, new figures reveal it is attracting shoppers from as far afield as Colchester and Bedford - turning Norwich into a major commercial rival to London's Oxford Street and the Bluewater shopping centre in Essex. I take it then that profits and going throught the roof for chapelfield, extra staff are being employed to cope. Or are the figures revealed represent the attracted shoppers spending money or just having a look around?  If the 10m expected vistors has been acheived in the first year, well done, but wait for the newness to wear off and see the vistor totals for the next 3 years............?    Report

21/08/2006, 4:51 PM mauther Joined on 21/08/2006 twixt yarmouth and norwich Posts 11 Re: Chapelfield Shopping Centre: Dissertation Research in Norwich I am probably one of the many who has never been to the Chapelfield complex and not even into Norwich in quite somewhile, this is that many of us are not drivers and for us there is no bus service from here unless we travel 12 miles the other way and then get another bus to Norwich. This then takes the travelling time into about 2hrs for a journey that would take half an hour normally...so I am not one of the 10m visitors that the complex has had and it looks very much like I wont be one of the next 10m either....Sorry!!    Report

21/08/2006, 5:32 PM Scaramouche Joined on 02/04/2006 obscure Posts 1,396 Re: Chapelfield Shopping Centre: Dissertation Research in Norwich As is so often the case, I.m interested as to where the EDP gets its figures from. The much respected CACI national retail footprint index still puts Norwich at No 8. It reached that ranking before Chapelfield opened. More significantly it is predicted to fall to 13th in the next two years. See http://www.caci.co.uk/index.asp?url=press-060515.htm They can't all be right. Can they?    Report

21/08/2006, 11:49 PM ROBERT Joined on 16/08/2003 NR Gt. Yarmouth Posts 3,602 Re: Chapelfield Shopping Centre: Dissertation Research in Norwich No they can`t all be right, the hype of giving Norwich a better press by the media, is often offset by the reality on ground level by the actual shoppers.     Report

22/08/2006, 9:59 AM Delboy Joined on 15/08/2003 Posts 5,089 Re: Chapelfield Shopping Centre: Dissertation Research in Norwich Perhaps it might have been a good idea for those who published the item to have done some more research on the matter rather than just printing some council spin. The EXPERT knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing .    Report

22/08/2006, 12:32 PM Norwich Chat Joined on 20/08/2006 Norwich Posts 15 Re: Chapelfield Shopping Centre: Dissertation Research in Norwich As touched on earlier.  I think the key thing is that we now have more tools via the t'internet than we ever had previously.  Sites like Pricerunner and Kelkoo allow you to find what you want for the cheapest price or best deal to you. I quite like the new Chapelfield shopping center mainly for its restaurants in particular Tootsies and Wagamamas.  While the shops may not be to everyone's taste I guess it comes down to personal choice.  If you need to go to a specific shop in there you will.  As for visitors for Norwich they will always explorer whats new to them. www.NorwichChat.co.uk 'A fine forum for a fine city'    Report

22/08/2006, 3:07 PM Huw Sayer Joined on 24/07/2006 Norwich Posts 60 Re: Chapelfield Shopping Centre: Dissertation Research in Norwich  Delboy wrote: What a load of retailing hype. There is only a finite amount of cash to be spent and all that has happened is that the money which would have been spent is just the same but spread more thinly on the ground. Rubbish - it's a fallacy to assume consumer spending is a fixed, finite amount.  That's not to say it's infinite but there is plenty of scope for attracting more money from elswhere in the country and for creating wealth in the local and national economy through increased trade, investment, employment and productivity - that's how economies grow. Huw Sayer    Report

22/08/2006, 5:05 PM BigFish Joined on 26/08/2003 Posts 188 Justification, monoculture and the Internet A number of points spring out from you comments here. Firstly, why does Chapelfield need to justify itself and to whom. In reality the City Council had very little choice in this development lacking the cash to do anything with the site. What this was left with was a commercial decision on what could bring a brown field site back into use. It is instructive that no serious alternative was ever presented. The redevelopment of the bus station showed that if a public use could be identified the Council would fight a long drawn out battle to make it happen. Surprisingly in that case they pulled it off. Secondly, does Chapelfield really support a retail monoculture. Inside high rents mean that the multiples are going to dominate but outside the additional capacity has freed up a number of sites that could now add diversity to the retail landscape. Extra competion also raises the bar for independents - would the Norwich Lanes concept exist without Chapelfield or would Jarrolds have invested to compete. It is very unlikely. Finally the Internet. Shopping is now entertainment, a leisure activity. Hence, the dominance of food and coffee retailers. Look at the way that book shops now contain coffee shops. The Internet has made inroads in white goods, CDs & Books where buying unseen you still know what you are going to get but shoppers like a day out shopping actually trying on clothes/shoes, touching and feeling. Sitting in "Colchester etc" a day out shopping in Norwich could still be very entertaining. The irony is the number of phone shops - ideal for internet sales but still everywhere on the High Street.    Report

22/08/2006, 5:30 PM Delboy Joined on 15/08/2003 Posts 5,089 Re: Chapelfield Shopping Centre: Dissertation Research in Norwich  Huw Sayer wrote:  Delboy wrote: What a load of retailing hype. There is only a finite amount of cash to be spent and all that has happened is that the money which would have been spent is just the same but spread more thinly on the ground. Rubbish - it's a fallacy to assume consumer spending is a fixed, finite amount.  That's not to say it's infinite but there is plenty of scope for attracting more money from elswhere in the country and for creating wealth in the local and national economy through increased trade, investment, employment and productivity - that's how economies grow. Must bow to your superior knowledge Huw. One didn't take into consideration how much more money to spend the big earners can make by employing cheap labour from depressed European countries. Obviously with the price of fuel going through the roof and massive increases in Council Tax it will give the normal householder a considerable increase in their spare cash to spend on non essentials and get into debt with their credit cards. The EXPERT knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing .    Report

22/08/2006, 7:25 PM Huw Sayer Joined on 24/07/2006 Norwich Posts 60 Re: Justification, monoculture and the Internet Quite right Big Fish. Hi Edd - good luck with you thesis - but be warned, the problem with most of your qualitative questions is that they ask for (and get) very subjective opinions.  ‘Surveys of one’ are not a reliable way to judge the success or failure of anything.    To give you an example: I grew up in Norwich and recently returned after 20 years in London.  I like the look and feel of the new Chapelfield Centre (it’s a lot better than the new and similarly sized centre in Wandsworth – population twice Norwich’s).   It's bright and clean, there seems to be a good mix of shops and the parking is very convenient for the centre of Norwich (particularly Chapelfield Gardens and the Forum) and cheap.    I also like being able to shop at M&S and then collect my bags later from their depot in the car park rather than lugging them around town.  That said the only places I have used in the centre are Mackintosh's Canteen and Borders bookshop.  I may, at some point, use the House of Fraser but everything else I can take or leave.    As for the Castle Mall, I find it dark, stuffy and dingy and I think the shops are more downmarket than the Chapelfield centre.  Meanwhile, the rest of Norwich seems to be as bustling as ever – certainly, there seems to be no sign that the two malls are hurting trade (anymore than the disastrous Anglia Square did in the 70s).    There are some good local shops and I suspect the threat of upmarket competition encouraged the Jarrold family to invest more in their store.  As for the mass of little shops, well some are good and some look tired and dingy (charity shops are the worst - they also have an unfair tax advantage over other traders).   The Customer rules But all of that is irrelevant.  Whether any one individual prefers the Chapelfield Centre to the Castle Mall is immaterial.  Likewise, whether or not people prefer the Internet is purely subjective chatter.  What matters is the collective actions of consumers – as evidenced by how many there are, whether they keep coming back and how much they spend.    To judge that, you need quantitative, objective facts, such as footfall, the rents the owners can charge, the sales and returns on investment that the shops make, the number of vacant units and the average vacancy period.  You would also need to look at rents and vacancies for shop units across the city centre and nationally (and across a number of years if you can get the data) to discern if there is any significant divergence between local and national trends.   Norwich Council's role was simply to judge whether the Chapelfield development was appropriate for Norwich overall (such as encouraging more visitors, which it seems to have done) - not whether it was a good move by the developers or good for individual existing shops.    The developers will presumably have considered various options and chosen the one likely to make them the most money - that's how it should be in a free market.  They will know if they are making money on it and the shops will know if they made a good decision to rent there based on their return on investment.  If the shops in the city centre or the Castle Mall are not happy, either with the amount of trade they are doing or the cost of their rents, they have simple option – close, improve or go elsewhere.    Overall, more competition is good for shoppers and good for shop owners.  Extra space should help keep rents down across the centre of the city.  Some shops outside the centre might well have lost trade - but if their costs have fallen too then they might still be better off.  There is also the network effect - shoppers like to shop where there is plenty of choice in a small area (for instance, restaurants tend to do better if they open near other restaurants because people like to know they have an alternative close at hand if their first choice is full).    Norwich is ideal for that.  At just a square mile of fairly level ground, it is a manageable walk for most people.  It also has a good ring-road system and plenty of parking around its perimeter making the centre almost free of traffic and easy to get to (by comparison to many other shopping centres).    It is also a fallacy to assume there is a limited and unchanging lump of "consumer spending" in the local economy.  More good shops can attract more high spending customers - so all shops can benefit.  Extra investment and employment can also increases the amount of wealth in the local economy - so boosting demand for a range of goods and services – that’s how economies grow.    While it might be unfortunate at the level of the individual, you can’t blame the Chapelfield Centre if shops in the Castle Mall or the city centre have actually suffered from the increased competition.  In fact, it would be a mark of the Centre's success.  This is the free market, to survive shops must respond to the ever shifting demands of their customers – they don’t need sympathy or protection.  Survival is the ultimate judge of success – nothing else matters in the world of retail. Huw Sayer    Report

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