A BELOVED homeware store on a busy UK high street is set to close its doors for the final time later this year after 67 years.
The specialist electrical and lighting shop has been a staple shop in London for decades after being first opened in 1957 by a famous athlete.
M.P. Electrical Ltd in Barking Road, East Ham has announced they will permanently close in December.
Famed English boxer and former light heavyweight champion Freddie Mills was the man behind the lighting store which went on to become a national chain.
When it first opened up it was just the East Ham branch which was open three days a week.
After a successful few years of trading Mills and his team opened up the store all week.
In the 1980s M.P. Electrical Ltd shops started to pop up across high streets in the south of England in places like Southend, Chingford and Blackheath.
They have all since closed leaving just the East Ham branch open in recent years.
Co-director of the East Ham store Ashwin Patel said: “It’s been a journey for us. It’s been my life.
“We are all gutted, we really are gutted that we’re closing.
“The whole journey has been great from one end to the other. I think I’ve had the best times of my life here.
“All the way through, we’ve fought and carried on.
“Unfortunately, because of the economic climate now and everything else, the overheads are too high.”
The company has even been used for work featured in The Shard and The Gherkin.
Ashwin, who has been with the company for over 30 years, said they have been on the brink of closing down for the past five years.
He told the Recorder that customers have already voiced their disappointment over the store going from the declining high street.
He added: “The store has been here for such a long time that they remember the store here from when they were little kids.
“They are saddened to see it go. It’s sort of like a community store. People still come in and have a chat to us, it’s nice.”
Customers have hailed the shop as “a hidden treasure of East Ham” online with many heaping praise on the old fashioned store for its quality products and helpful staff.
Since announcing the closure, several saddened shoppers have left touching memories.
One said: “Such history. Sad to see it closing down.”
It comes as several other stores nearby are also closing down.
Marks & Spencer’s shut down its “wonderful” branch in Ilford last week.
The company revealed the store in Bessborough Road would be closed for good on June 29.
The firm blamed the closure on changing shopping habits.
The Works store in East London also pulled down the shutters on one of its sites for the final time back in May.
The shop in the Heathway Shopping Centre, Dagenham was officially closed on May 30.
A Poundland in Chadwell Heath has also closed down in recent months after the nationwide company was unable to agree lease terms for the shop.
EMPTY shops have become an eyesore on many British high streets and are often symbolic 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.
