In the dim recesses of my mind I recall a time when books all had to be sold at the same price
This is no longer the case

Amazon are a vast organisation and have tremendous buying power
With that goes discounts that mean a small shop will buy in at the price Amazon sell out

I bought a cook book at Christmas
It was ?30 in Waterstones and ?19.50 on Amazon

A few years ago I used to buy books for a children's hospital for their renal unit
I would do my homework in Ottakars (now Waterstones) and then buy on Amazon
Clean new books, carriage paid, limited germs, well packed and insured
A small shop cannot compete on that level they just can't

I don't know how much the rents are in HOP but this quiet little area has to turn over a lot of money per day to pay the rent, insurances, buy stock, pay self/staff and hopefully make a profit as well

The public understandably don't see beyond their immediate needs
When I used to do beauty therapy the client saw, for example, an underarm wax as a 5 minute job and couldn't understand the pricing but it cost almost as much in materials and insurances etc as it does to wax a full body!! You have to use more wax but a wax strip goes a long way The insurance is the same whether you remove one hair or 1,000,000. the health and safety costs are the same
It also costs money to stand in an empty shop with no customers. the rent heating lighting insurances have to paid whether a customer walks through the door or not
A bit like children's clothes, much smaller but actually more fiddlyto make and when a factory costs something they have to time each element of the procedure.
You also have the problem of buying the right products in and in the right quantities which is not easy

Customer loyalty is a hard one
It doesn't matter how much they like you
I used to sell a lot of nutritional products and spent a lot of time advising clients and holding the stock.
I don't do it any more - how ever much the product worked for them, if Holland and Barratt was more convenient they would pop in and replenish there. It is the way life is and small businesses struggle