News

London calling

A trip through central London reveals that the English have kiosks. But on one wintry evening, fewer people than one would expect seem to notice.

February 24, 2002

Summarize withChatGPTGrokPerplexityClaude

Wandering through central London is something akin to taking your favorite fantasies and strangest dreams and fashioning them into posters that you paste up on the wall with no real sense of order.

One minute, you can be in the center of a warm, relaxing, friendly place, the next your senses can be rocked into a thrilling overdrive. Central London, essentially, is fun, unpredictable, and just a bit less than clinically sane. Which is why people love to flock there, especially young people seeking the buzz of a major metropolis brought to life as the sun descends.

The wonder of central London is such that one can forget the flu rocking around the system and head out on a typically windy, wet February evening to see the sights and maybe get sucked into a puzzling vortex or two. Like Vivien, the spiky-haired, metal-clad empty head of BBC's classic comedy series The Young Ones would say: "It's absolutely brilliant."

KIOSKmarketplace.com editor John Harrell

And one thing you are sure to see on any given evening in central London is a kiosk. Quit scratching your head in bemusement. In central London, kiosks are - like the area itself - an unpredictable sort. Equal parts trendy, necessary, and ubiquitous, kiosks do not dominate central London like the oddly out-of-place Starbucks Coffee houses that appears to breed like rabbits in London. But they are there if you know the right places to go.

Cold, flu, and job season

Any tour of central London will include a stop at a Bootsor Sainsbury pharmacy. Especially in February. Whether you like it or not, being in London during the winter means being sick. As with the lovely array of MAXIMUM strength cold/flu medications and interesting cough drop flavors (black currents?), a trip to the happy land of over-the-counter medications actually means something over there.

So the tour of central London began with a trip to a Boots at the crest of High Holborn, where the road hits a six-way intersection and chaos ensues. Boots has a loyalty program that rewards customers for their continued patronage of the store, but on this particular evening, not a lot of people appeared eager to avow their loyalty. Ten minutes in the store produced many customers in a hurry to get somewhere else, but no one eager to show their loyalty. My thought is that rush hour might have something to do with it.

Making my way down High Holborn, in the general direction of Covent Garden, one stumbles into a UK Jobcentre. Working with manufacturer NeoProducts Ltd., the employment agency has unveiled a 9,000-kiosk strong project that has become one of the best known deployments in the industry. Jobseekers can now visit a Jobcentre and get information on employment options through England via a kiosk.

Ergonomically appealing, UK Jobcentres' kiosk offers access to job openings through England.

Eager to road test the kiosk, I reached out to push open the Jobcentre door when an even stronger force than my arm - a lock - got in the way. Jobcentres have normal business hours and 6 p.m. is not considered a normal business hour in London. Oh well, on to Covent Garden.

The Garden Party

Covent Garden is one of those amazing locales where the natural beauty and strength of centuries-old architecture runs smack dab into modern commerce and Â… they find a way to peacefully co-exist.

Such disparate forces work because of the vitality of the place. A crowd, mostly young but featuring a few surprises, mingles and shifts from one store to another, the pace dictated more by the individual's mood than anything else. The ambiance that creates is electric. Forget that it was a long walk from the Hatton Garden, forget that the weather stinks and you got rained on coming over, Covent Garden's charms and sheer enthusiasm wins one over.

Several places in Covent Garden highlight the convergence between Victorian charm and 21st century industry. The market area - a two-story structure with an open center - is a magnet. With its combination of retail outlets, quality restaurants, and tourist-trap gift shops, there is a little something for everyone here.

For Internet enthusiasts, there is a two-tier computer center in the market that strips away the amenities of a typical cybercafe and focuses on the electronics. And on a typical weekday evening, the place is packed. Students to scene makers to out-of-towners seeking to reconnect with loved ones back home give the place a buzz.

Just a typical weekday evening for Virgin's V.Shop kiosk in London's Covent Garden area.

The fact that it is packed brings one thing home: At-home Internet access in Great Britain is not in the same league as in-home access in the United States. There are reasons why many hotels, airports, and other high-traffic areas in the UK offer Internet and e-mail kiosks and lack of access is a big one.

Leaving the Internet center, however, one still felt hungry for a technology fix, a kiosk fix to get closer to the truth. Despite wading through a gazillion stores in Covent Garden - including the New Zealand shop that did not feature any rugby gear and the Australia shop that had Aussie Rules footballs in the window but nothing but postcards and kangaroo dolls inside - there was still no sign of a kiosk.

Then I saw the Virgin sign. It was V.Shop time.

V is for victory

Virgin head honcho Sir Richard Branson likes to do things at one pace - flat out.

The V.Shop concept is a perfect example. Why give up on a retail area because the only storefronts available are not big enough to handle your typical record/video/entertainment mega store. Branson certainly would not, which is why he came up with the V.Shop concept.

The V.Shop at Covent Garden was just off the main strand, but it was packed. On the top level, shoppers could pick up any of the top 100 albums currently residing on the British music charts. But it was the basement, with more floor space and less people, which drew me there. The basement, besides featuring a slightly wider, more eclectic range of music, also featured the V.Shop kiosks.

The kiosks are the centerpiece of the V.Shop strategy because they cut down on needed floor space. That space becomes unnecessary because the kiosk itself serves as the merchandise area, giving customers a chance to view Virgin's products and purchase them through the kiosk. You do not walk out the door with the product, but it will show up at your door in a few days.

But after spending 15 minutes in this particular V.Shop, a disquieting question popped into my mind - why is no one using them? A couple customers puttered at the machines, one even looked up some product information and may have made an in-store purchase using the information. No one, however, whipped out a credit card and came away with a receipt and promise of merchandise to come.

This was not a scientific study, and in no way should anyone judge the potential success or failure of projects through one central London walkabout tour. But next time, could someone do me a favor and buy a bookshelf audio system at a V.Shop while I'm watching. It would make the inevitable London winter illness a little easier to take.