Like most people in my world, I’m delighted to see the new Kith flagship on Regent Street in London.

It’s a huge space. It’s an enormous investment. It has an incredible looking restaurant.

It is inarguably a positive sign for physical retail in central London – a location that is still thriving despite facing many inevitable challenges over recent years.

However, I did find the entire experience a little hollow.

And for me, that isn’t about the quality of this brand, and this store (both great).

It’s because, as always seems to be the case with brands like this, I was told this was the home of the Kith “community”.

The c-word continues to be a big problem in retail for me.

A community shaped hole

Call me old-fashioned, but I still believe in actual community. And that belief or understanding is primarily built outside of retail – as it should be.

Community is a table tennis club run by volunteers inside a local church, because it’s the only space that’s available and free to use.

It’s a bi-weekly gathering of perimenopausal women who get together in the park and dance to jungle music while their kids are at school.

It’s Games Workshop, if you want a retail example.

And at the heart of each (including Games Workshop – one of the world’s best retailers and I’ll die on that hill), is that the unifying experiences are non-transactional.

These are groups, brought together by shared interests and beliefs, who get together to share those interests and beliefs.

Now, as proven by Games Workshop, tapping into the idea of community therefore isn’t out of reach for retailers. But the fundamental experience in a space driven by community has to be non-transactional.

If the unifying experience is in fact buying a t-shirt, I can’t help but feel that the community is hollow – or perhaps, non-existent.

As a result, I found myself walking around Kith, trying to figure out what, exactly, the community experience here was.

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