ska invita
back on the other side
The thing I read says they use prisoner labour for packing but it's quite an old article
Is the High Street doomed
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Rob Ray
Weight is meaningless
This is absolutely what's been changing in London to regenerate its high streets - even chains are going to great lengths to seem individual and locally-relevant for the sake of variety/authenticity. Most town councils are a) behind the times in recognising this is the way they'll have to go to draw people back to town centres b) usually lacking in the means to make it happen even if they have the vision of it.
hash tag
Books, not bombs
As in docklands? No where can be that bad. It's soulless.
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
Flying Tiger?Yep they are very much almost the same thing, save for the books, kiddy clothes and records/videos. I think poundland took up a lot of the missing trade too in that area. It'll be a shame to lose Wilko. Genuinely one of the more useful shops out there. All we'll be left with is vape shops and Flying Tiger soon
Artaxerxes
Look out, he's got a gnu!
It’s usually just called Tiger but it’s name is Flying Tiger
It’s a mini budget ikea for disposable crap that’s sometimes got mildly useful items in like washing up brushes
Artaxerxes
Look out, he's got a gnu!
What I do miss is HEMA but covid and brexit killed that in the UK
UrbaneFox
They've doubled in price
The Range's success played a big part in Wilko's downfall, in places where both shops operate, obvs.
Puddy_Tat
naturally fluffy
they didn't really exist in london and the south east at one time - they started out somewhere in the east midlands, and i first encountered them (as wilkinsons) in the notts / derbyshire sort of patch when i spent some of my time in that part of the world from the late 80s, and it was later that they expanded.
i'd be a bit annoyed if they disappeared - some of their stuff is just cheap tat, but a fair bit of their stuff doesn't exist elsewhere on the 'high street'
platinumsage
HaveMyPassword123
They went into administration in 2012 and in 2019, so they've been in trouble for a while.
wemakeyousoundb
hopefully not gimboid
the range is opening in what used to be debenhams in chelmsford.
I thought they were mostly out of town.
Elpenor
a clown’s heart and a mandolin
Yeah my housemate in 2006 who was from Wirksworth in Notts, seemed bemused we didn’t have one in Reading at the time. I think there was one in Aldershot in the shopping centre around then as I remember going there on a course and walking around Aldershot on my lunch break.
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
Or maybe just people who've had their income gobbled up by inflation and are looking to save money?
UrbaneFox
They've doubled in price
Kensington High Street is full of crappy shops, phone shops, cheap hardware - Savers has a branch - and building societies, probably because the rents were astronomical, "flagship stores" have moved to Westfield Shepheds Bush, and it wouldn't have bothered Kensington as they would have converted the shops back into houses / luxury apartments.
wemakeyousoundb Quite, shops that were out of town will move to empty shops on the High Street, and be the new flagships.
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tonysingh
Random Clever and Witty Strapline
I wish I had the gift of compassion that you do and could see it like it but sadly, no. I really do think they were chancers, trying their luck. Same thing happened when Woolies went down, people moaning that soon to be jobless staff weren't reducing stuff enough.
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Yep, that's my experience of once running a 2nd hand bookshop. Prices already lower than charity shops or amz, but you could guarantee the person asking for a discount owned a house worth a million, and spent enough money in the pub to subsidise a small army.
Edit: plenty of decent customers too. I'd hate to sound bitter...
Bingoman
Well-Known Member
American Greeting brought them in 2012 and sold the business in 2018 to a family who then sold the company a year later
NoXion
Craicy the Squirrel
Even if they weren't down on their luck, it's a business transaction at the end of the day. The only reason I wouldn't ask is because I know it's pointless to ask staff for discounts they have no power to give.
In some situations you're right. However counter to that supermarkets that are big enough almost always have ample free parking, which town and city centres rarely if ever offer.
That's something that doesn't get mentioned enough if you ask me: the financial incentive to use the car at the supermarket, or at the out of town retail parks. It doesn't benefit the high street at all, and nor does it encourage the move to greener and healthier forms of transport.
UrbaneFox
They've doubled in price
I always think of this post when I see a Clinton's card shop
Big name brands and companies on the verge of collapse
Hugo Boss's uniform department was given its marching orders
www.urban75.net
cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
It is for the Guildbourne Centre here, I honesty don't know what else is in there now, apart from the Worthing Gin shop.
Cloo
Banana for scale
Westminster Council and the New West End Company (which is basically a collection of landlords in the area) are on a campaign to end the sweet shop etc leases on Oxford Street and preferentially give them to small businesses rent free. Makes sense as a) a lot of these sweet/tat shops weren't even paying rent and b) it's probably worth more than the rent to potentially stop people saying 'Huh, Oxford Street is just full of empty shops and tat' and to make big names want to move in/back in. Oxford Street: Small businesses offered rent-free stores
Working just behind Oxford Street I can see that some name brands are also moving back in to former tat shops, but the area will still have struggle ahead.
Working just behind Oxford Street I can see that some name brands are also moving back in to former tat shops, but the area will still have struggle ahead.
I seem to recall reading somewhere, Private Eye or the Guardian I think, that those sweet shops were largely some kind of money laundering scam. I don't remember the details though.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Walking through the centre of Croydon the other day I found myself thinking about how long it will be before 'shops' open as retro experience venues where you'll be able to re-live what it was like to go up to a knowledgeable (human) shop assistant who can assist you in the transaction and hand over the product in exchange for cash. A bit like the success of those Ostalgie places/museums that sprung up in Berlin.
it was about avoiding business taxes by renting them out to unscrupulous tenants through myriad, impossible to trace, shell businesses.
ska invita
back on the other side
Nightclub numbers at all time low amid pandemic woes and cost of living crisis
Nearly a third of Britain’s clubs shut their doors for good in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic as heavy restrictions hammered the trade for around two years
www.mirror.co.uk
liquidindian
Hello
I wonder with all the apps they have nowadays if the idea of drunkenly heading to a nightclub "on the pull" is dead.
pogofish
Testicle Hairstyle
This is apparently the latest "saviour" for our high st.
More popups, when almost all the other central ones have closed or been shut, more eating/drinking places when the ones that are already there are by and large struggling and does nothing to address the problem of daytime footfall still being a fraction of what it was even a few years ago and they have cut even more buses recently - don't even think about driving-in..!
I truly pity the local worthy they have roped-in to spearhead this project. He's not the worst by some way but I think this is utterly beyond him.
At least there aren't any "luxury" flats/apartments in the scheme - which all the other proposals have depended-on to a significant degree.
More popups, when almost all the other central ones have closed or been shut, more eating/drinking places when the ones that are already there are by and large struggling and does nothing to address the problem of daytime footfall still being a fraction of what it was even a few years ago and they have cut even more buses recently - don't even think about driving-in..!
I truly pity the local worthy they have roped-in to spearhead this project. He's not the worst by some way but I think this is utterly beyond him.
At least there aren't any "luxury" flats/apartments in the scheme - which all the other proposals have depended-on to a significant degree.
Cloo
Banana for scale
Funnily enough, three long-term empty shopfronts on our local crappy high are suddenly being fitted out (one former bank in modern building, one double-fronted former convenience store and one small former hearing aid shop). Most likely uses - offices, laser beauty clinic type space and maybe a bookies but I think we have finally maxed out of the number this stretch can have.
On clubs, gsv and I still have one weekend with our kids away on camp so fancy some clubbing, but we're so out of circulation it's hard to know where to start - there are more clubs in London still than I thought there might be, but one issue is I can't tell necessarily which might be 'a bar with a DJ' and which might be ones where people actually dance, which is what we want.
I don't know about being drunkenly on the pull, but a life of social media certainly lowers the appeal of being permanently recorded as having been off your tits every weekend for the younger generation.
On clubs, gsv and I still have one weekend with our kids away on camp so fancy some clubbing, but we're so out of circulation it's hard to know where to start - there are more clubs in London still than I thought there might be, but one issue is I can't tell necessarily which might be 'a bar with a DJ' and which might be ones where people actually dance, which is what we want.
I don't know about being drunkenly on the pull, but a life of social media certainly lowers the appeal of being permanently recorded as having been off your tits every weekend for the younger generation.
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