I suppose the original format was the Market, often an annual or seasonal event, where livestock and other agricultural commodities, including farm servants, were haggled over.
These were often the origin and life blood of a town. A public house and a yard sectioned out by hurdles was the nucleus for many a settlement.
High street shops were the more permanent successors to temporary stalls. As 'respectable' ratepayers, shopkeepers came to fear, scorn and try to limit more casual trading activity. 'Fly pitching' became an offence. This attitude wasn't universal of course. Pubs and cafes thrive on market days, as do specialist shops.
The arrival of larger chain-stores served to magnify the drawing power of the High Street.
It was when our social geography started to factor around the car that
its demands for parking space, and the impact of its congestion made out of town retailing an attractive alternative.
The retail outlets that evolved were larger versions of the in-town department stores, which then were often closed down. No imagination was needed: retailers just had to copy the American model; the world's first car-driven culture.
Entire malls of shops, with banks and cafes and, above all, free and abundant parking were built on the periphery of larger towns.
Goods within were centrally sourced, and increasing from newly emerging distant industrial sources.
The chance of there even being a procedure whereby anything local could be sold there was slight.
Our role of the purchaser became essentially passive, walking through aisles stacked high with unrepeatable bargains to choose from, rather than daring to ask for particular things that we knew we needed.
We became Consumers. Milch Cows. Mouths on increasingly obese stalks.
The out of town manifestation of the grocer was the Supermarket. Different ones competed for key sites and sought presence adjoining smaller and smaller towns. They would even agree to build schools and libraries in order to acquire a council's approval for a development. An increasingly intelligent and adaptable cancer..
Although the big supermarkets preside over most purchases of food now, there has been a noticeable resurgence in interest in local, more personal suppliers.
The main expressions of this is in street markets.
Supermarket supremacy is further challenged by internet shopping, whereby a retailer need have no physical retail presence to offer a rival service.
Once a company gets to a certain size, it's principal aim becomes immortality. Survival.
It is unlikely that the major Oil companies' main trade in fifty years time will be in oil.
So the supermarket chains are morphing into myriad forms to weather the rapid changes in retailing. In-town convenience stores, cash&carry supply to independent shops, and local internet shopping are growing.
Big Organisms are by nature, homogeneous.
The Earth is best served locally.
Amen.
I foresee the day very soon when supermarkets host a local farmers market instore, thereby being seen to support local produce and initiative.
Both retailers and producers embrace the semblance of the small, the local, the friendly, and the personal.
The logistics of scale and production can breathe a clinical sterility over what started as a creative and exciting venture.
When you see one of your favourite brands get taken over by a faceless multinational company, it feels cold and predatory. Often it is done stealthily, to avoid this reaction.
The trade in brand names is global.
An old trick was to give a brand a homely human face: Captain Birdseye and Mr Kipling loom out of my childhood. Celebrities now imply that some of their charisma will rub off on us if we buy from their signed ranges.
The plain fact is that if you buy something from a big store, it will have come from a big producer.
Of course there are co-operatives of farmers etc, but the discipline and sterility of that big contract will come to infect their whole business model. The arena of large scale retailing is rapacious and ruthless. The resultant agricultural landscape is a plastic desert, served by migrant slaves.
The only way to sponsor small scale land-use and artisanship is to buy from
outlets of similar size and outlook as their suppliers.
Don't kid yourself otherwise.
Farmers Markets are our most successful model of this. Town councils are coming to welcome them as a way to breathe new life into soulless, failing shopping streets.
They though, like any other shop format, can become hidebound or trapped in self imposed restrictions.
They all tend to favour the local, but some restrict this to food. This is small minded and does not reflect a belief in a truly vibrant rural economy.
Some will only allow, say, one baker or jam-maker.
Such a market will soon fail.
-Both customers and producers need choice and change. New people deserve a chance to start.
As they become more established, they can innovate. A space held open for a visiting stallholder from outside the catchment maybe. A space for a supplier with a genuine relationship to a third world source perhaps.
Markets must not become hidebound. Otherwise customers drift away. And then the suppliers follow.
I hope that their success and acceptance means that the lid is off.
Shops and Garages with spare frontage could host a covered table and a couple of hopeful artisans.
I am considering a more feral form of trading, from my van in a lay-by.
The visitors, who are the ones with the money, come in cars.
Is there something intrinsically Dellboy about this? Are we still imbued with deep-rooted town burgher propaganda? A nation of small shopkeepers indeed, defending their frontages against all comers.
We are new peasants, trying to negotiate a living with a new Earth, and have to be brave and claim our pitches.
Trade is a holy, and equal exchange.
And money at its noblest, is a universal token of appreciation.
It's only shit if you treat it so,
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