Mediterranean weather. A Sunday kick-off. No wonder supermarkets sold millions of sausages, beefburgers and cans of beer to the nation’s legion of expectant footie fans.

According to the pundits, Germany was a young side, inexperienced and eminently beatable. Before kick-off, you could hear excited voices chatting in back gardens, cracking open cans and uncorking wine bottles in the sun. Two hours later and the conversation was sparse. Appetites waned. Only the booze flowed as everyone realised they’d been suckered by the hype yet again.

Apart from bookies, the true victors on Sunday were the supermarkets, which will have raked in a fortune for their month-end accounts. Like them or loathe them, 75 per cent of grocery sales in the UK occur at either Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s or Morrisons. If you’re a retailer and you’re keen to achieve scale, then these selling machines are too big ignore.

The internet, which has been the most important development for entrepreneurs in a generation, now accounts for ten per cent of the retail sector as a whole. 
As impressive as that may be given that the widespread adoption of broadband only happened eight years ago, many internet entrepreneurs now realise that if they are serious about their business, offline sales and distribution are key to achieving growth.

Part of the problem for a young business is brand. ‘Getting product recognition online is a major challenge,’ says Johnnie Pattullo, chief executive of the supplements and vitamins company Health Spectrum Europe. ‘Having a product on the shelves of Harrods or Boots not only sells it but also advertises and advocates it.’

Some companies, like Hotel Chocolat, the £52 million confectionary business steered by Angus Thirlwell, started selling via catalogues, then online and more recently graduated to the high street. Recognising the risks of the extra operational costs of being on the high street, Thirlwell insists it’s the right move: ‘One of the first things we found was that it opened us up to a wider demographic; everything from school girls to OAPs, and a greater diversity of income levels. The online customers had been [upper to lower middle class] with a female bias, a credit card and were often in their 40s.’

It’s a dilemma for those smaller retail companies which set up online and are looking to expand and yet don’t have the capital to open a store. The high street continues to be where the bulk of the nation spends its hard earned cash, and the power of the buyer in the supermarket or chain store is as great today as ever before.

See also: More focused offline marketing has 'tremendous benefits'