A MAJOR high street retailer with 400 branches is shutting one of its stores within hours following a string of closures.
The New Look shop in Swindon town centre will welcome in customers for the final time today.
The Regent Street outlet branch opened in 1997, and sells women’s footwear, clothing and accessories.
Customers’ next nearest New Look store is at Orbital Retail Park on the outskirts of the town.
Shoppers have been left devastated after finding out the Regent Street store will close permanently.
Posting on Facebook, one said: “Nothing left in the town centre nowadays.”
Another posted: “Gutted. Me and my daughter love going to this shop often. Such a shame.”
A third bemoaned: “And another bites the dust, going going gone.”
It comes after New Look closed a string of stores across the UK, including in Medway and Kent.
Another branch in Gillingham closed in September after opening more than 30 years ago.
Other stores have closed in recent years, including in Perth, Scotland, in June and an outlet store in Leigh in May.
The major retailer left shoppers devastated after pulling down the shutters on its branch in Cumbernauld, Scotland, in March.
Before that, it closed a branch in Shirley, Southampton, in December.
It’s not all bad news for the retailer though, as it has been opening stores as well as shuttering them.
It’s common practice for major chains to close and open stores based on customer demand and trends.
New Look opened a bigger site in The Fosse Park Shopping Park, Leicester, last September after temporarily closing the site in the summer.
It also opened a store in Grimsby earlier this year too.
The retail sector has struggled in recent years as high inflation coupled with a squeeze on shoppers’ finances has seen people with less money to spend in shops.
An increasing trend towards online shopping has seen retailers struggle for footfall through stores as well.
A number of major chains have fallen into administration since the start of last year.
Wilko, Homebase, Ted Baker and The Body Shop have all plunged into administration but some stores have been saved in rescue deals.
Pressure on the sector is not expected to abate any time soon either.
The Government announced in its Budget employer National Insurance contributions (NICs) will be hiked in April from 13.8% to 15%.
Fears have been raised the hike will be passed onto shoppers in the form of higher prices and job cuts.
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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