A MAJOR fashion retailer with hundreds of stores in the UK has confirmed it is closing a popular branch inside a bustling town centre.
“Closing down” signs have appeared at the New Look shop in Swindon Town Centre – one of its 400 branches across the UK.
The fashion brand has had the popular store on Regent Street for a number of years serving as a clearance outlet.
But now it will be closing down for good.
A member of staff told The Sun that the final day of the store would be Monday, December, 23.
Local shoppers have been left devastated by the news, dubbing the closure as a “huge blow”.
One high street shopper said: “Oh no whatever will we do?”
Another customer shared: “Absolutely gutted! It is such a shame. Me and my daughter shipped here often.
While a third person commented: “Ahh this sucks for the people who are losing their jobs right before Christmas.”
It is understood that the staff were told about the closure on Thursday – and they will now be looking for new employment.
Manager director Andrew Kilpatrick told the Swindon Advertiser: “It is not being sold but it is being advertised to let in case New Look move out.
“They’re on a temporary basis at the moment so there is no guarantee they’ll be there.
“We are acting for the landlord and seeing if somebody is interested in taking it more permanently.
“We are looking for someone to take the property, either all of it or parts of it, on a longer-term basis.”
It comes after the New Look‘s store in Gillingham High Street, Medway, Kent closed after operating for 30 years.
A spokesperson for the fashion retailer said: “Our store in Gillingham is closing on September 17.
“We would like to thank all of our colleagues and the local community for their support over the years.
“We hope customers continue to shop with us online at newlook.com, where our full product ranges can be found.”
New Look has several other branches in Kent, including stores in Canterbury, Maidstone, Tunbridge Wells and Bluewater Shopping Centre.
The latest closure comes after B&M recently announced it would take over the former home of Wilko between Savers and Sports Direct in Gillingham High Street.
Other recent closures in the area included the Wilko stores in Strood, Rainham, and Gillingham, which closed in September 2023.
The Claire’s store at Hempstead Valley Shopping Centre in Gillingham also closed in February 2024.
And the Debenhams store in Chatham Town Centre closed in January 2020.
It comes after Weird Fish, which has around 30 branches across the UK, confirmed it has closed its Canterbury store just two years after it first welcomed customers, located at Unit 5 of Marlowe Arcade.
The closure was a commercial decision due to the landlord of the store “redeveloping”.
A spokesperson from Weird Fish said: “The landlord is redeveloping this unit and the adjacent one, which meant they needed the space back which didn’t work for us commercially.
“We are however very keen to find another suitable site in Canterbury at the earliest opportunity. We also still have a store in Whitstable.”
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.
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