The high street was already in some trouble before the Coronavirus Pandemic caused most shops to close their doors – some for good. Signs screaming ‘CLOSING DOWN SALE’, boarded up windows, abandoned stores and an increase in charity shops had become common sights in most towns and cities.
Shopping trends throughout the UK were showing a reduction in footfall, many businesses were already forced to reduce their costs or close their shops completely, and people were spending more time shopping online with major corporations like Amazon. All this despite a supposed increase in support for small, local businesses.
Then the Coronavirus struck like the proverbial meteor, forcing businesses to furlough, or even fire their staff, close their doors and hope that they could survive and reopen once it was all over. Few were to know how long it would last, when they would be able to reopen again and with what restrictions they would need to adhere to once they could.
The high street became a scene from an apocalyptic movie, void of human existence; with the gulls, crows and random litter left by the odd passer-by being the only occupants for much of the day.
Most consumers had little choice but to use major online corporations or large-chain supermarkets to purchase their goods once lockdown came into effect. They weren’t supposed to be leaving their homes, let alone travelling to the local town or city, spending time browsing high street stores. So how were they supposed to support local retailers who weren’t even open?
The huge corporations had the business model, the money and the logistics network to be able to cope with the influx of orders received during lockdown and they saw their profits soar, whilst small, independent businesses had to dig deep into their reserves just to stay afloat.
What were these independent, local retailers to do? Give up? Throw the towel in?
There must be a way to utilise all of this support for local businesses for the survival of their own business, whilst also adhering to the rules put in place during lockdown.
Enter CHOOSiE; An online sales platform designed to be incredibly simple for sellers to join and upload their product inventory, and for consumers to buy the products they need from the local businesses they want to support.
Any seller with a modicum of knowledge of the internet and product management can upload their full catalogue of products onto the CHOOSiE platform, with images, descriptions and more, and sell their products to local customers as if their business was fully open. What’s more, they can choose whether the buyer needs to collect in person or whether they will deliver the product to them.
CHOOSiE was created to give local, independent retailers an online avenue to utilise to compete with the global conglomerates undercutting their prices due to the access to economies of scale that their wealth and size allows them. It was also created to give the growing number of consumers that wish to reduce their spend with international corporations and support local businesses a platform on which to do so.
Through CHOOSiE, business owners can manage and sell their stock online, paying only 6% of each purchase in fees, which includes all fees charged by the payment processing service – this is less than any of the corporate entities claiming support for small business product listings online.
CHOOSiE wishes to provide a safe, open, accessible platform for any independent, UK retailer to sell their products online so that they don’t lose all of their custom to global corporations with the lion’s share of the market.
Hopefully, as a result of being able to market and sell their products online, they can reopen their physical stores once lockdown is over and continue to sell their products face-to-face with their valued customers, whilst maintaining a steady income through utilising the CHOOSiE platform at the same time.
The hope for CHOOSiE is not to replace physical, independent stores, but to allow them the chance to balance both the physical and virtual worlds and take advantage from the upwards trend of online shopping.
