Mike Ashley - I wouldn’t listen/believe a word he says.
Anyway it means more charity shops for my kind of pensioner shopping!
Funnily enough I had this opinion of Mike Ashley until I watched his "audience" in front of the Gov committee.
Now I have skin in this game obviously but what I saw was a businessman that had a real understanding of why we find ourselves in this position and his suggestion is not a daft one.
The high street is dead due to an outdated business model.
It needs to adapt or die. Well it's already on life support but it's not the fault of the businesses themselves.
ATS Diamond Tools is run from an office in my garden. I legitimately don't pay business rates or rent or staffing costs to make sales, I am an internet business. If I moved my business to a shop less than a mile from where I currently run, the profit from the first £250,000 a year of turnover would be sucked up in rent, business rates and other fixed overheads.
That's just not sustainable. The entire High Street business model is outdated and no longer viable but it simply hasn't been adapted.
The government and landlords (for large properties of which many of whom are investment/pension/hedge funds) don't see this as their problem, they see it as the business owners problem.
The business owners are quite rightly walking away as they are getting no support. I get this, Mike Ashley gets this. Amazon and eBay gets this.
This is then compound even further by global business made possible by the internet.
eBay and Amazon strongly subsidise direct sales from Chinese sellers. But not only do the platforms subsidise this.
China is still classed as an "emerging market" internationally, therefore qualifies for special concessions when it comes to certain service. Delivery for example. Royal Mail are obliged to handle and deliver Chinese originating parcels and packages at a rate that equates to less the £0.01 per item. Yup that's postage costs from China to the UK of less than a penny.
Items under £30 are also exempt from VAT.
We all pay for this in our taxes and increased subsidised postage costs ourselves.
Do I like Mike Ashley as a person? I've never met him.
Do I think he understands business and his ideas make sense? Undoubtedly, the Government would do with listening to him instead of berating him.