Having just completed my Christmas shopping I had cause while waiting for what seemed like several days in the checkout queue to reflect on the year ahead. Headlines shouted doom and gloom from the nearby news stand, and while a few heads seem to be rolling, mainly in the financial sector, I am increasingly puzzled by what I’m seeing.
On the one hand, traditional business seems to be suffering. Art galleries are having a particularly tough time, and I sympathise with those cottage industries who make their living from sculpting or metalwork or any other artisan-style trade. Expertise such as this that takes years to develop will be gone if these same people are forced to retrain into more ‘mainstream’ professions.
Some companies have gone to the wall already, and others are sure to follow, but I wonder how many of them were on the way anyway and the economic downturn was the catalyst in their downfall. Woolworths has in my opinion been on its dying breath for several years, and while it’s a shame that it didn’t make it’s centenary celebrations, and I am sympathetic to the workers who aren’t going to have a good Christmas at all, it is symptomatic of the dinosaur attitude of many of our more established retailers and I wouldn’t be surprised if a few more of them go in the next year. This will inevitably lead to more negative headlines, more doom and gloom, more closures, and so the circle of bad news will keep going round if we’re not careful until when the dust clears we’re all out of work and wondering how that happened.
On the other hand, I am regularly speaking to entrepreneurs who are happy to launch their new business in the current economic environment, companies who are reporting booming sales, even estate agents telling me of record months! Of course, this may be bravado – nobody wants to admit that business is not good for fear the vultures will start circling and they could be creating a self fulfilling prophecy – there’s no point in tempting the business gods for they are fickle. Alternatively, maybe we are being led to believe something that isn’t quite what it seems, as if the press have their way, we’re on the way back to the Stone Age.
Personally, I’m not so sure. If the lack of parking spaces and the checkout queues in my local supermarket today were anything to go by, you’d think that everything was fine. I await the official trading figures with interest.
Merry Christmas.
