It's been a blast and now I'm off

After editing this magazine for the past five years, I am leaving. This has felt like a particularly tumultuous period to cover retail, although old lags may disagree.

The Internet has come and gone, and come back again; Philip Green has become a major player and the legacy retailers have become the bed-blockers of the high street.

I am frequently told consumers have become more demanding, or that the market is more competitive, as if this were some passing aberration the public would soon grow out of. Wake up and smell the coffee: this is a trend that is never going to go away.

People are getting richer and they are getting pickier.

Equally, deflation, which poor retailers love to whinge about, is actually a force for the good. If things are getting cheaper, demand will go up, not down. High prices and high margins are refuges of either the lazy or the lucky retailers.

In five years a large number of chains have gone private, and a new breed of buccaneering retailer has emerged, impatient, anti-bureaucratic, entrepreneurial.

The stock market is not terminally broken, but its supporters need to look at how private operators have unlocked so much value, and ask why their preferred model has failed to do so. It has no divine right to continue.

Love him or hate him (and I prefer objectivity), Philip Green is the messiah of private retail. He has become the dominant personality through a combination of sheer force of character, luck and expertise.

When I publish something Philip disagrees with, he bothers to ring me up and tell me, often expanding my knowledge of middle English as a result. But he doesn't hide behind PRs, he cares intensely about his business, and I wish more chief execs displayed his passion and commitment.

Reflecting the general buoyancy of retailing, over the past five years the magazine has won awards, made record profits and, almost uniquely in the business press, converted from a (mainly) free to a fully paid-for title.

The strong journalistic team and output have been expanded, andreaders will see move exciting changes in the near future. I wish my successor well, and I will follow developments with interest from my new perch as editor-in-chief of The Bookseller.