https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44398352

That’s 5,300 jobs at risk


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44394948

While not retail, restaurant chain Carluccio’s is having to scale back too

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44315826
Not sure how many jobs that will affect, but the one here in Chelmsford is potentially one to close.

Anyway, those three are a potential 11,000+ jobs under threat. As someone said on Twitter the other day, if this was the car industry, or steel, the government would be stepping in to try to keep those jobs safe. That’s partly because the job losses would affect an entire area, and could kill a town completely. Retail is more distributed around the country, so that problem is lessened, but even so, that’s still a big loss.

But we got blue passports

All hail the great economic recovery!

i wonder if online trading/sales is affecting the high street stores along with sky high local business taxes, i wonder.

ps. i may get around to renewing my very old and out of date blue passport when it returns to a full UK only passport in blue ...

Local rates & taxes (the ones issued by the local council) aren't that much of an issue by themselves. The issue is the cost of stock.
In the last 12 months, the devalued £ has meant a lot of items have increased in price, we've seen price increases of 50%+ on some items.

Businesses have tried to avoid passing all this cost on to consumers but that eats in to the money needed to run a business & depletes your reserves.
When businesses do start raising prices to cover their costs, people stop buying & the business goes under.

For businesses like Poundland where they don't get a 50%+ markup & would on a 1-4% margin & manufacture in China,then import to the UK, this happens a lot faster.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44436435

My look into retail for an idea a few years back told me that unless you could really afford it, anywhere on a high street or busy area would attract massive rent (a unit in our local shopping centre were upwards of £200k per year), and the size of the smaller units were just above the threshold where you’d get a kickback from the council on rates. Anywhere cheaper was be off the beaten track, and wouldn’t atrract the needed footfall to keep something sustainable. I was asking myself - “how do shops keep going?” - especially the smaller ones. At the time, I was thinking that it would be the size of the business - the shops in the shopping centres were all the same as anywhere else - the suaul suspects - and most of them have the momentum and brand loyalty to keep going. I did find out why there were few, if any, independent shops in the town centre though. Just keeping the doors open was a massive cash operation. Buying in stock, paying staff, are extras on top.

If you have small, or tight margins, then you’re going to be hit hard by a weak pound, and this is cleraly where we are. Even the big anmes are not immune, even those with bigger margins than Poundworld.

http://businessadvice.co.uk/high-street ... ven-years/

and its getting worse, along with online competition and other factors upto and including the exchange rate ...

I'm amazed pound shops have lasted this long.
1) There's so many of them, the market is saturated.
2) A lot of what they sell (other than food etc) is just junk. You use it once and it breaks. People will soon learn a lot of their stuff just isn't worth buying.