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Is the High Street doomed

mojo pixy said:
Swings, slides, roundabouts etc embossed with the maker's mark Wicksteed Kettering improved childhoods around the nation back in the day. Good work on that :thumbs:
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There’s a massive park in Kettering called Wickstead Park that had loads and loads of their play equipment, all the big stuff. Visiting there was an occasional treat if I was staying at my cousins in Northampton.
 
Debenhams is taken over by lenders as Mike Ashley loses £150m stake
Tue 9 Apr 2019
Debenhams has been taken over by its lenders, wiping out shareholders including Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct and paving the way for store closures that put thousands of jobs at risk.

The department store group’s 165 outlets will continue to trade under a pre-pack deal which only affects its listed holding company.

A letter to shareholders posted on the website of FTI Consulting said its executives Simon Kirkhope and Andrew Johnson had been appointed joint administrators of Debenhams. It said the group’s two principle operating companies had immediately been sold to a new company owned by Debenhams’ lenders.
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One of the 22 Debs closing is the one in Wadsworth. Seems like its only been open for 5 minutes. I guess the redundancy won't be so great and there may even be break clauses in the lease.

Oddbins is still in administration 2 months down the line.
the poor staff, must be awful.
 
hash tag said:
One of the 22 Debs closing is the one in Wadsworth. Seems like its only been open for 5 minutes. I guess the redundancy won't be so great and there may even be break clauses in the lease.

Oddbins is still in administration 2 months down the line.
the poor staff, must be awful.
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Wimbledon, Walton-on-Thames, Staines, Guildford...

All very prosperous areas, goes to show how incompetent the management has been if they fucked it in those towns.
 
Bahnhof Strasse said:
Wimbledon, Walton-on-Thames, Staines, Guildford...

All very prosperous areas, goes to show how incompetent the management has been if they fucked it in those towns.
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Its the ridiculous rents in these places meaning they’re not profitable. One of my clients is a Debenhams supplier - several million quid turnover a year just on that account. Yet they’re not stocked in a single store - its all online on the Debenhams website. Its the same for every bricks n mortar chain with a website now, theres more choice online, so why go into town? I havent spent anything in a department store for over a decade myself. I think retail will survive but boring ass department stores (which Debenhams is) are over.
 
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And I can totally understand Ashley wanting to buy Debenhams - for the website (which must make a fortune) and customer database.
 
Tend to agree with a lot said above. I just despair at the way the department stores go about things. Sometimes I have to wear a suit for work. I bought my last one at House of Fraser. On entering, you are met with a barricade of perfume and make up, behind which there is a maze of similar stands. It doesn't intimidate me - I know where men's work clothes are and walk through, but the whole frontage says "not for men". I buy my work shirts online and my work chinos online (simply because shops don't stock my size in either) but I'm not going to spunk out on a suit without trying it on. But House of Fraser do not ask me to go in. They say "go away". Debenhams is the same. So is John Lewis. Marketeers will say that women spend more in shops, which may be the case, but the strategy is clearly failing. There are clothes shops in the same indoor mall that say "Guys, this is where you buy your work clothes".
 
I heard the Debenhams up by me does the whole minimum wage zero hour thing so not shocked by this development
 
People buy cars
People want to park their cars close to shops
Town centres are going pedestrianised
People can't park their cars
Out of town shopping centres and malls have big car parks
People go to where they can park their cars
Local authorities complain town centres are dead
 
mx wcfc said:
Tend to agree with a lot said above. I just despair at the way the department stores go about things. Sometimes I have to wear a suit for work. I bought my last one at House of Fraser. On entering, you are met with a barricade of perfume and make up, behind which there is a maze of similar stands. It doesn't intimidate me - I know where men's work clothes are and walk through, but the whole frontage says "not for men". I buy my work shirts online and my work chinos online (simply because shops don't stock my size in either) but I'm not going to spunk out on a suit without trying it on. But House of Fraser do not ask me to go in. They say "go away". Debenhams is the same. So is John Lewis. Marketeers will say that women spend more in shops, which may be the case, but the strategy is clearly failing. There are clothes shops in the same indoor mall that say "Guys, this is where you buy your work clothes".
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At least the Debenhams here in Manchester has a corner entrance with an escalator straight down to menswear, so you can avoid the poisonous perfume miasma elsewhere on the ground floor. I bought some jeans in Debs a few years back, but think that is the only time I've bought anything from them possibly ever.

They're closing the store in my Stockton on Tees, my hometown, which isn't a surprise. M & S closed not that long ago and it won't be long before they only exist in major towns or cities.
 
I’ve literally walked into Debenhams and almost immediately walked out and thrown up on the pavement because of that awful perfume smell. It’s vile. Must have had some sort of stomach bug anyway but that was the trigger (it was also late on Christmas Eve afternoon when town was full of pissheads so I got lots of dirty looks and tutting from passers by who assumed I’d been on the lunchtime sauce after finishing work for the year and not someone in significant pain/distress).
 
I'm in the minority because I went to Debenham's this week!

I looking to buy some handkerchiefs and Debenhams is one of the few department stores where you can be reasonably certain they will stock them. After braving the nausea of the perfume counter entrance (Dogsauce and mx wcfc are entirely correct in their loathing of this) I found a range of gentlemen's handkerchiefs.

But then I went to M&S where I bought a pack 50p cheaper. Debenhams is doomed...
 
The Cotswold group also includes Cycle Surgery/Runners World etc. and several of those are also closing.

A pattern seems to be that for a lot of places it’s unsustainable rents that are fucking them over. Think there needs to be a general correction in commercial rents (as well as residential) as it’s not allowing society to function.
 
Rent and proprty prices are just in a world of their own these days, and neither seem to have any connection to the prices of any other goods or services (other than dragging all prices up as everyone struggles to pay their fucking rent month by month)
 
Being a commercial landlord will become much less profitable as footfall goes down and more people start working remotely.
 
Landlords will always find a way to keep money coming in. If shops don't pay, turn it into flats... It's been happening in the suburbs for decades, the high st is bound to follow in the end.
 
Treated myself to an M&S ready meal the other day. Boy have they gone downhill. First their underwear and now the food. They'll be hitting the wall soon.
 
I thought M&S saw food as the way forward as well. Mt local Oddbins has now closed but there is another one close by which is still going; for now.
What is not nice in some respects is to see HMV opening up again. I am guessing the stores closed down, the staff got laid off and now the stores
are having to employ people, I have seen adverts for staff at newly opened stores. Not good for the staff laid off. Also, they are not yet back on line.
 
I saw HMV in Doncaster have moved back into the premises they occupied for years before moving into the Frenchgate Mall. I hope the previous staff get re-employed.
 
It was HMV Doncaster that I saw advertising for staff :(
I guess/hope existing staff have new jobs elsewhere and were offered their jobs back.
 
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