SHOPPERS have been left devastated after a popular shoe retailer announced it will pull down the shutters on a seaside town centre shop.
“Closing down” signs have appeared at the Shoe Zone shop in Boscombe, Bournemouth – one of its 330 branches across the UK.
1
Shoe Zone insisted the decision was made due to “unseasonal weather in the second half of the year, particularly peak summer, as well as trading out of 26 fewer stores”.
The retailer is yet to announce the closure date.
The struggling firm witnessed a dip in profits before tax of around 40 per cent, Daily Echo reports.
Charles Smith, Shoe Zone chairman, told the media outlet: “A year of two halves, with the first half trading in line with expectations and ahead of the previous year, however, the second half trading was below expectations due to unseasonal weather conditions, particularly at peak summer, however, our key back to school period traded above expectations at the end of the year.”
Just weeks ago, the Shoe Zone branch in Burgess Hill, West Sussex was pictured with large “Closing Down Soon” banners.
The pictures were posted on the local Facebook page Burgess Hill Uncovered.
The caption read: “Shoe Zone are not renewing their lease at Market Place Shopping Centre, therefore the store will be closing in the near future. Sorry to hear this for the staff.
“How long do you think it’ll take the agent to fill the unit (if at all!) and what would you like to see come into the centre in its place?”
The post was met with a flurry of comments, with many locals complaining about the number of recent closures in the area.
The news comes following a handful of Shoe Zone closures over the last two years.
The high street chain closed 13 branches last year – including another in Sussex.
This year, it has closed its Watford branch and announced several other closures – including in Stoke-on-Trent and Inverness, Scotland.
But the brand is also expanding its presence with a number of store refits and relocations in the works.
The brand confirmed it opened eight new stores last year in November including Maidstone, Bristol, and newly-refitted stores in South Shields, Gravesend and Colchester.
High streets across the UK have suffered from decline over the past decade.
But it still has hundreds of branches across the country.
Some retailers have closed a few branches here and there for various reasons, like when a store lease has come to an end.
Other examples of one-off rather than widespread closures are if there are changes in the area, like a shopping centre closing, and in some cases, a shop will close to relocate to another area.
Some chains have faced tougher conditions though, forcing them to shut dozens of stores, or all of them in the worst case.
Since 2018, 6,000 retail outlets have brought down the shutters, according to the British Retail Consortium.
The trade association’s chief executive Helen Dickinson OBE blamed the closures on “crippling” business rates and the impact of coronavirus lockdowns.
Why are retailers closing shops?
EMPTY shops have become an eyesore on many British high streets and are often symbolic of a town centre’s decline.
of a town centre’s decline.
The Sun’s business editor Ashley Armstrong explains why so many retailers are shutting their doors.
In many cases, retailers are shutting stores because they are no longer the money-makers they once were because of the rise of online shopping.
Falling store sales and rising staff costs have made it even more expensive for shops to stay open. In some cases, retailers are shutting a store and reopening a new shop at the other end of a high street to reflect how a town has changed.
The problem is that when a big shop closes, footfall falls across the local high street, which puts more shops at risk of closing.
Retail parks are increasingly popular with shoppers, who want to be able to get easy, free parking at a time when local councils have hiked parking charges in towns.
Many retailers including Next and Marks & Spencer have been shutting stores on the high street and taking bigger stores in better-performing retail parks instead.
Boss Stuart Machin recently said that when it relocated a tired store in Chesterfield to a new big store in a retail park half a mile away, its sales in the area rose by 103 per cent.
In some cases, stores have been shut when a retailer goes bust, as in the case of Wilko, Debenhams Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Paperchase to name a few.
What’s increasingly common is when a chain goes bust a rival retailer or private equity firm snaps up the intellectual property rights so they can own the brand and sell it online.
They may go on to open a handful of stores if there is customer demand, but there are rarely ever as many stores or in the same places.
