BBC today, 29th July 2009 - reports that about 12000 independent shops and nearly 7000 branches of major chains have closed so far this year in England and Wales according to research.
At first glance is so easy to point the finger at the recession for drop in trading however during my quest of interviewing hundreds of businesses - I discover that many of them are doing even better - for example some innovative business are using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to double its customers -
Facebook is growing faster than Goolge ever did. It took Google ten years to reach 50 million users – something Facebook achieved in just 19 months and now facebook have more than over 250 million users. Twitter is a microblogging site - Dell makes money on Twitter and offers its followers exclusive Twitter deals.
Lets take another example - Did Woolworths closed down because of recession or because they were not innovative enough - to move with the changing market - While Tesco Metro, a fairly recent concept, seems to be thriving - now whom we notice in Petrol stations -
Recession alone cannot be the sole factor, its also about, time, place, cultural factors, etc... however one thing is certain that the market-place is changing and changing at a rapid pace so business-people need to be constantly innovative and maybe should re-visit and question their whole proposition more often.
