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Is the High Street doomed

What will come of Croydon. St George's Walk is just a film set. Whitgift Centre is dying on its feet. House of Frasers future is in doubt as is Debenhams.....
 
I see Debenhams is going to close around 50 stores with the sad loss of about 4000 jobs.
I see it is also reported that Gourmet Burger King, Prezzo and Byron are also reporting problems. No doubt they will be closing branches and shedding jobs :(
 
Are the Top Shop customer base up on current news?

Some will be. I'd have liked more people to boycott them when Mr and Mrs Green's tax arrangements were publicised. However, news of billions of revenue being avoided always seems to meet with indifference from the masses, "They're all the same" or "If I could afford a good accountant...".
 
A small sad business story "the only one in London" Much loved Battersea business could be forced to closed | Wandsworth Guardian

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Fuck me. Ashley is buying Evans bikes and will close half the stores!

Half of Evans Cycles stores set to close
Sad news for the staff in the shops that are going to close (and I know 3 or 4 people that work at Evans) but I can't say I'm especially sorry overall - they're known within the bike trade for aggressively targeting independent bike shops. They opened big stores in Aberdeen and Edinburgh that were both within a short distance of stores of the small independent co-op chain that I work for and they really hurt our sales in both cities (for example they undercut our bid for the Edinburgh Council bike to work contract, which was a major source of income for us). We're still going (just) but if Evans were to close those two stores it would give us a bigger share of the available customer base again. I'm sure it's the same story for lots of smaller bike shops across the UK.
 
Ashley running the remaining shops will be bad news, full of risible crap badged up as once reputable brands that he owns (so lots of Muddy Fox stuff).

Evans has been run by Venture Capitalists for a number of years, as with a lot of the other businesses that have gone under of late. A pattern emerging.
 
What they'll is Ashley up to? The trend is away from high street retailers at the moment, yet he is buying in to it more and more.
is it simply a case of asset stripping bankrupt business's I wonder...noting hecwaits for them to go bankrupt and the buys themthem for a song seconds later and sets about closing them.
 
What they'll is Ashley up to? The trend is away from high street retailers at the moment, yet he is buying in to it more and more.
is it simply a case of asset stripping bankrupt business's I wonder...noting hecwaits for them to go bankrupt and the buys themthem for a song seconds later and sets about closing them.

It’s a Branson/ Starbucks approach - he is piling into everything by hoping that one or two will cover the loses in the rest whilst at the same time making the high street into a race to the bottom that will finish off his competitors who do not have pockets deep enough to subsidise the business.
 
Sad news for the staff in the shops that are going to close (and I know 3 or 4 people that work at Evans) but I can't say I'm especially sorry overall - they're known within the bike trade for aggressively targeting independent bike shops. They opened big stores in Aberdeen and Edinburgh that were both within a short distance of stores of the small independent co-op chain that I work for and they really hurt our sales in both cities (for example they undercut our bid for the Edinburgh Council bike to work contract, which was a major source of income for us). We're still going (just) but if Evans were to close those two stores it would give us a bigger share of the available customer base again. I'm sure it's the same story for lots of smaller bike shops across the UK.
Also I was never sure what Evans brought to the table, apart from a few discounts on last year's bike models. They rarely employ knowledgeable people. At least Halfords (who also don't) has come up with a semi-decent brand of bikes that people like, and stores tend to be located away from other bike shops.

Didn't know Evans was started in Kennington though, or that it was so old. Praps they should have stuck to Kennington.
 
The investment companies with their hidden from view wealth are just itching to turn all those loss making city center sites into flats to sell to other investment companies from anywhere in the world. In a few years all the money will be gone along with the ownership to far flung places where taxation isn't a problem.
 
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