Buy now, pay later, no thanks

Don't you just hate holidays? All those good intentions, clad in disappointment?

The special project planned for months ... and then blown around the garden by a rare southeasterly gale while you hunker down, flattened by the flu virus you've been keeping at bay because of the singular importance of Doing Your Job, and which inevitably pounces the moment you relax your guard?

The dancing to the family imperative to have fun, when all you really want to do is slink off into the dark, lick your wounds and hibernate for a week or three?

Or, for those who really do identify most strongly with their work, the reminder that they are so far from being indispensable?

On Saturday afternoon I finished work for a week. Buoyed by the knowledge that, apart from having one column to bash out, the next seven days belonged to me and not a bunch of unseen, unknown shareholders, I opted for a quick wander round town rather than heading directly for home.

The first thing of note was the number of empty shops, or those with big bold "to lease" signs on their windows. The little book shop right across from the Mail, which seemed to be having a closing down sale for most of the time it was open. The Cake Shop in the Dowson arcade, open less than a year and now with a small "taking advantage of the quiet times" sign on the window and a large bold "lease" sign completing the picture.

In just two blocks on Bridge and Hardy Sts there were about a dozen such empty stores. Add to them Black Market Imports, Tresson Interior Design and The Linen Press, all closing down, along with Summit Real Estate's two Hardy St premises soon to be vacated when its Rutherford St base is finished, and it is clear that the recession is biting chunks out of the central business district.

It's more than that of course. You have to wonder what other large retailers might be considering joining the drift southwest, started with The Warehouse and, perhaps, Spotlight and now sheeted home so emphatically by Harvey Norman's monstrously large retail shrine on St Vincent St.

You have to wonder how many other retailers, large or small, will be toppled by the new shopping juggernaut, with its purchasing/pricing clout, vast range of stock and free parking (provided you can find a space - what was that clown doing there on opening weekend towing a horse float through the chock-full parking lot? Unless, of course, the float was to haul home mum's new half-price lounge suite in).

It's fashionable to question the wisdom of the city planners for allowing a four-stores-in-one barn, described by the Mail earlier this month as being the size of 18 basketball courts, to set up beyond the fringe of the CBD.

One school of thought is that the pressure the newcomer will put on some retailers in the inner city will be irresistible. Will the Noel Leeming Group keep open its Bond and Bond store, just a couple of doors from its flagship shop on Trafalgar St? How will Smith's City, Hunter Furniture and Tahunanui's Orange Furniture and Beds (already having a 40 per cent off sale) cope? Will Farmers be keen to keep operating two large stores in Nelson city as well as the large chuck of costly Richmond Mall space it also occupies? How will Kitchen Essentials get on?

It's no wonder Alan and Mary Pullar have been unable to sell The Linen Press - once such a prominent retailer in Nelson - over the past year, as the 7722sqm giant has taken shape on St Vincent St. It's sad to see the likes of them, Tresson and Black Market closing.

These are the sort of stores that give towns and cities their unique fingerprints. We get to know their owners as friends, or at least friendly and distinctive faces, and can scarcely imagine the sweat and the stress and the risks they've carried in order to carve out their niche, creating employment for other Nelsonians and hopefully a decent return for themselves.

Harvey Norman, on the other hand, with its $70,000 TV and half-price computer mouses for 15 bucks, is part of the Anytown, Anywhere movement. Having wandered through its similarly over-sized Wairau Park store in Auckland several times, the similarity is marked - same stock, same feel, same sameness.

For all that, it is easy to see why it has become an instant mega-destination. It hardly needed its free hamburgers, bouncy castle or opening specials to achieve that. Nelson might be a low wage town, and the world immersed in a recession verging on a depression - but there is precious little sign of that a couple of blocks up St Vincent St.

Clearly, with 250 stores worldwide, the group has the sort of purchasing clout and ability to market a wide range at attractive prices that others will find difficult to match - hence the fear that the end of the world for the CBD is nigh-on here.

A counter-argument is that stores like this will save Nelson city from the nearly as brash retail threat centred around the Richmond Mall. People from across the region will be drawn to the city by Hardly Normal, and that'll mean a positive spin-off for the CBD. Time, as always, will tell.

Meantime, the central city is looking shabby. There are 5760 specs of birdpoo in 1sqm of Trafalgar St. I'd tell the mayor, but I'm having a holiday. Don't you just hate them? The putting important things on hold so that you can partake in a little fanciful indulgence? Allowing triviality to triumph, just for a change?

I can't help my conservative upbringing. I don't see the value in buy now, pay later deals - the sort of debt-building, want-not-need-based primal drive that stores like Harvey Norman thrive on. Having recently taken on a mortgage burden four times bigger than I've ever had before, even while nearing the end of the most productive years of my working life, I feel exposed to influences way beyond my control.

With just basic household-economics mentality, I look at the Americans printing money to subsidise inefficient producers and manufacturers and shudder. Surely an inflationary period will kick in within a year or two, forcing interest rates to rocket up, and the best way to prepare for that is to do what I can to reduce my principal. I could, of course, ignore my instincts and go interest-only for a while in order to buy that $70,000 plasma TV. I'd love to ask the mayor's advice, but I'm away on holiday, having fun.

- © Fairfax NZ News