Only strong together

How brick-and-mortar retailers create genuine value for customers through community

Brick-and-mortar retail has been under intense pressure to change for years. Digitalisation, new consumer habits and the growing dominance of major online platforms pose enormous challenges for local shops. Names such as Amazon and Zalando have long since become synonymous with convenient one-click shopping. But anyone who hastily concludes that this spells the end for brick-and-mortar retail overlooks one of its greatest strengths and opportunities: the sense of community.

Local and regional advertising and interest groups, for example, demonstrate the potential that arises when high-street retailers and local businesses do not operate in isolation from one another, but instead work together. This collaboration is far more than a stopgap measure – it is a strategic approach with clear benefits for businesses and, above all, for end customers.

The power of collective visibility

An individual specialist retailer (e.g. a high-street shop or a brick-and-mortar wholesaler) often has only a limited marketing budget. In a collective, however, several retailers pool a small portion of their resources and thereby achieve significantly greater reach and visibility. Joint advertising campaigns, social media activities, town festivals or Sunday shopping create a level of attention that a single business could hardly generate on its own.

And it is precisely this undoubtedly successful concept that often falls short when it comes to achieving sufficient online visibility. It fails to attract enough customers to the high-street shop. It comes to a halt due to the sheer scale of the web; it comes to a halt due to IT expertise that is sometimes insufficient and lacks the necessary breadth for such scales, and it comes to a halt, at the very latest, due to the need for IT investment in the millions, which is usually required quite quickly. Competition on the internet is, after all, largely non-regional, and the often successful and time-tested joint initiatives of advertising and interest groups quickly reach their (financial) limits when it comes to achieving adequate digital visibility on the web – even for an otherwise wonderful local community. This regional digital visibility requires something like a very, very large community of many regional advertising and interest groups, as well as like-minded individuals and businesses, who pool their resources to achieve perfect digital visibility for their products.

Is there anything else like this in Europe at the moment? No. At Surtido.Online, we don’t currently see anything - at least in our opinion - that comes anywhere near matching our solution.

This creates clear added value for customers: they are drawn not just to a single shop, but to an entire shopping district or city centre featuring a wide variety of businesses. Shopping becomes an experience, not just a one-off transaction. The focus shifts from ‘I’m buying a product’ to ‘I’m spending time in my city, locally and with an awareness of the environment’.

Regional identity as a competitive advantage

How this works in practice

Ultimately, what customers are really looking for is a product that meets their wishes or needs – something they might want to feel in their hands before buying, and perhaps receive some additional advice on. In other words, they are seeking the significant benefits that local retailers often provide as a matter of course.

From a purely organisational and operational perspective, this requires a link or reference number connecting the customer’s desired product to the actual product available in-store.

Ideally, this linking element is the globally unique "GTIN" number of a product or product variant (P.S. in Europe, this was also known as the EAN until 2009)
Of course, a GTIN is not mandatory, but it makes things run more smoothly for everyone – including end customers and tradespeople. For more information, see here

Conclusion: Cooperation as a strategy for the future

The spirit of community in high street retail is not a nostalgic reminder of times gone by, but a forward-looking strategy.

By pooling resources, coordinating concepts and communicating collectively, we create added value that pure online retail struggles to replicate: a holistic shopping experience with a personal touch.

• For end customers, this means better service, more inspiration, and a stronger sense of connection to their town or region.
• For retailers, this means stability, innovation and competitiveness.

Brick-and-mortar retail (retail, brick-and-mortar wholesale) does not need to compete with digital platforms by trying to copy them. Its strength lies in proximity, dialogue and collaboration. When individual shops come together to form a community, the result is more than the sum of its parts – it creates a vibrant marketplace in the truest sense of the word.

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