Most towns in Northern Ireland have a branch of homegrown department store Menarys, founded in Dungannon in 1923.
ow the biggest competition for companies like Menarys isn't their rival bricks and mortar retailers but the constant stream of Amazon Prime vans delivering online shopping.
Deliveries by Amazon, Hermes, DPD and others now punctuate the day of the tens of thousands of us who have been working from home in the pandemic.
Online shopping has been an essential for getting our hands on certain types of goods during lockdown. But when non-essential retail reopens next Friday, what's in store for our towns?
Nearly 100 years after it was founded by James Alexander, Menarys retains a cosy image, uncannily at home in the roughly 15 towns where it has branches - places like Enniskillen, Ballymena, Bangor, Dungannon, Newtownwards, Larne, Omagh, Limavady, Strabane and Coleraine.
But the issues it's been facing have left life anything but cosy for owner Stephen McCammon, other retailers of its kind and by extension, towns all over NI.
He's had to close units in Craigavon, Omagh and Cookstown and had to negotiate with the administrators and new owners of Arcadia brands like Topshop and Miss Selfridge, long a staple of Menarys shops.
That Belfast will bounce back as a retail centre seems in little doubt.
But the recovery of towns may be more fragile, with many citing the unfairness of the rating system and a lack of imagination about town centre uses as factors holding them back.
Retailers like Carol Little of Alana Interiors in Lurgan have splashed out on improvements to their shops to lure back their customers - but will it be enough?
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has said shop vacancy rates rose "significantly" in the last quarter of 2020 as retailers like Warehouse and Oasis were snapped up by online-only companies.
More will follow as a result of the sales of Debenhams and Arcadia brands like Topshop, Topman and Miss Selfridge to online retailers.
The old animosity between independent retailers and multiples seems to have melted away in the face of the common enemy of online retail.
The people working in bricks and mortar retail are all pretty confident that traditional, boots-on-the-ground shopping, will bounce back, at least in the short-term.
However, there's an acknowledgement that more empty shops are inevitable - and warnings from one planning expert that we should embrace other uses in town centres, like residential, and consider pedestrianisation.
Carol Little is primed for reopening Alana Interiors on Friday week. "Obviously we are very, very excited about getting reopened again, and our customers are very excited.
"We've spent about £100,000 on improvements to the store. We've worked very hard on the customer experience and that's vital.
"People are really excited to get out again and a bit fatigued with shopping online. They want to reset their relationships again.
"Local towns offer a personal relationship with the customer."
Even the smoothest online shopping experience doesn't give you the benefit of experienced staff in a shop.
"We've done very well through social media and ecommerce but there's nothing to replace that one-to-one experience that people crave again."
Lurgan is only a few miles from Rushmere Shopping Centre, and about six miles from Portadown.
She says there's no schadenfreude from her over the demise of Debenhams. Its eventual closure after a liquidation sale will leave the anchor spot empty for Rushmere.
"The shopping centre and close-by town centres like Lurgan and Portadown all worked quite well together.
"People visited the whole locality and came to all places. I don't like to see the shopping centre suffering in this way and would like to see it revitalised.
"Lurgan is a town of independents and it will weather the storm fairly well. It has a very, very loyal customer base which really supports us and all local retailers. Portadown has the same very strong base."
But rating policy should change, she says. Currently business rates are decided using a district council rate combined with a valuation of the property.
"Rating policy is not fit for purpose and must be looked at in a completely different light.
"They have to allow us to be able to offer customer experience and give us room to invest in our premises.
"I think personally the government need to give a period of time for engagement with local retailers to see what is fit for purpose. Turnover could be an indicator, as well as where a shop is located, and what it's offering local community."
All retailers are hoping for a big lift in trade from the Department for the Economy's retail voucher scheme.
The Belfast Telegraph understands the £145m scheme - expected to give each over-18-year-old a £100 shopping voucher - will be launched around late summer/autumn. Online retail and betting shops will be excluded.
The department says it's not yet ready to divulge the timing of the scheme, nor how much each voucher will be worth. A spokesman said it's "under development by officials and good progress is being made to bring it to fruition". "The scheme will be launched at a time when it is safe and appropriate to stimulate demand and encourage the public to shop on the high street.
"Full details will be provided in due course."
The anticipated arrival of the scheme by the autumn is to be timed for when initial pent-up demand is spent - and could also provide a boost to spending if unemployment rises at the end of the government's furlough scheme, which is supporting the jobs of about 106,000 people.
Richard Bowman, group managing director of planning at consultancy Gravis, says town centres could benefit from more pedestrianisation, welcoming Belfast City Council's decision to grant planning permission to the pedestrianisation of part of Brunswick Street where some outdoor hospitality will be set up.
"Changes could make it easier for businesses to trade outdoors by making it easier to put up marquees or street furniture outside, or adapt flexible use of town centre units."
More uses should be considered for town centre units.
"Retail is constantly under threat. Councils and planning policy needs to be an awful lot more flexible and think more around how to evolve town centres into other range of uses.
"If they insist on retail first and foremost, that can end up in a lot of vacancy rates and dereliction."
He feels shoppers will return to their town centres but that a strong presence from independents is required.
"Banbridge strikes me as a very good town for local retailers, which is quite interesting, given that there is the large out of town shopping centre, The Boulevard, on the outskirts.
"Banbridge town centre seems to have retained the local shopping experience and is full of family-run businesses."
Glyn Roberts, chief executive of Retail NI, said there are many factors to consider in bringing town centre retail back to life.
"It's not just about the reopening of non-essential retail and close contact services, but also how we get peple back into offices and workplaces, and what date do we apply the high street voucher scheme?
"All of that is important for every town centre, regardless of size or location. People should make a special effort to support local independents and local hopsitality businesses. It's important that the voucher scheme is brought forward to support that." He is optimistic that shoppers will return and that aspects of the lifestyle many of us adopted during the pandemic will stick.
"One of the things we saw is that, because we have so many people working from home, there has been a stronger focus on supporting local businesses.
"Especially when hospitality was open, people did support it and stay local.
"There is a big opportunity for those businesses to capture that and keep that trade."
He thinks town centres will benefit from the NI Civil Service move to set up regional hubs in 10 locations outside Belfast, from Newry to Londonderry. Sites in Ballykelly and Downpatrick will be the first to open.
But Glyn is braced for shop vacancies to rise in town centres. "There's no doubt we will have significant increases in the short term of dereliction from so many companies moving completely online.
"But we need to slightly change the conversation. Instead of looking at them as failures of yesterday we should see them as new businesses of tomorrow.
"Empty space will have a crucial role - how do we use that space to support the next generation of independent retail entrepreneurs?
"That will need a strong, coordinated approach with the councils and Executive."
Menarys, now led by Stephen McCammon, the great-great nephew of James Alexander, says it's been "a long four months" since the latst lockdown began. But he is hopeful.
"I think shoppers will come back. We're constantly asked by our customers, '"when do you think you'll reopen?'"
He's smarting that his category of retail has been dubbed "non-essential" and has been shut while giants like M&S, Tesco and Sainsbury's can freely trade in the type of stock he sells.
"We now have to re-engage with the customer who has been encouraged to shop with other people in this period of time. In most other sectors, you don't have that option."
Having to shut down hasn't been the only challenge. Arcadia Group, his biggest trading partner as the owner of brands like Topshop, Topman and Dorothy Perkins - which have long been sold in Menarys stores - have been sold to online retailers.
"We have acquired merchandise both from the administrators and from Boohoo and Asos.
"That will mean that we will have stock from Miss Selfridge, Dorothy Perkins, Topshop and Topman being sold in quite a number of stores for a number of months. That buys us time, and we are also making changes in store like repurposing some spaces.
"We'll have things like our cook shop, linens, homewares, accessories and footwear given a lot more prominence. Formerly secondary spaces will come to front door locations.
"We're not intending to replace the Arcadia concessions but will be more confident in sourcing product ourselves."
It's been in the process of closing down three stores - its Tempest stores in Cookstown and Omagh and a Menarys in Craigavon - but it's keeping open a shop in Armagh which was launched as a pop-up in October.
"Our twon centres are hubs in our community and it's an entirely different way to doing shopping compared to the online offer.
"People need to get out and be part of their community again and i think we will see a lot of support.
"There is frustration and anger in the way bigger multiples have been able to trade unencumbered and unaffected so there has to be a push towards supporting local retailers and independents. And how the retail voucher scheme is done is important.
"It's got to be tailored towards those who have carried the heavy weight of lockdown and it's critical that's it's not something that gives a further boost to the supermarkets and others who have capitalised on this period."
