A HIGH street fashion store set to shut its doors in days has launched a “closing down sale” with items massively reduced.
Rising rents, energy bills, and the cost of living have forced many retailers to shut their stores across the UK high streets.
Diva, which sells low-cost womenswear, only opened on Watford High Street in February, but “closing down sale” signs appeared in the windows last month.
Now, new signs have been put up confirming the store will pull down the shutters on August 2, reports the Watford Observer.
The business never had a website but stood out on the high street for one unique reason.
It had a large white facade bearing its name and enticed shoppers by advertising “1,000s of items for £10 or less”.
In March, it was revealed that several shoppers had complained about the design which had been put up without any advert consent from Watford Borough Council.
The council then told the property’s owners and agents to remove it before Diva “promptly” complied, according to the local authority.
The 3,342 square foot unit was listed on Rightmove for £7,917 per month in February.
Popular retailers, such as Iceland, Boots, and Matalan, have been reducing the number of their high-street branches.
Several major ones have fallen into administration in the past year, including Wilko, Paperchase, and most recently, The Body Shop and Ted Baker.
The Body Shop collapsed into administration on February 13, putting its almost 198 branches at risk of closure.
Since then, it has closed down 82 locations.
However, it’s not all bad news for the high street, as several other retailers and hospitality venues have plans to expand.
Beer giant Heineken announced plans to invest £39million to help reopen 62 previously shuttered British pubs.
Aldi has announced that it will open 35 new UK stores.
The openings form part of Aldi‘s long-term target of 1,500 stores in the UK.
The supermarket is set to invest £550million in expanding its UK footprint this year alone.
Aldi said each new store opening will create around 40 new jobs on average.
In recent months, Asda has been opening hundreds of convenience stores as it seeks to rival major players Tesco and Sainsbury’s.
B&M plans to open “not less than” 45 brand new stores across the UK in each of the next two consecutive years.
Purepay Retail Limited, the parent company of Bonmarché, Edinburgh Woollen Mill (EWM), and Peacocks, has said it wants to open 100 new high-street stores over the next 18 months.
It has yet to give the exact locations where it will open the 100 stores or when they will open.
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.
One of the UK’s favourite bakery chains, Greggs, has exclusively revealed to The Sun plans to open more outlet branches by the end of 2025.
Home Bargains, which was running just under 600 branches as of last June, has said it wants to “eventually have between 800 and 1,000 retail outlets open”.
The major discounter has stopped short of saying when it wants to reach the 1,000 store target, however.
Primark is also opening new branches and investing and renovating more than a dozen of its existing shops.
Screwfix is set to open 40 new stores nationwide as its owner, Kingfisher, seeks to expand the DIY brand’s national presence.
Tesco has revealed plans to open 70 more stores across the UK over the next year as part of major expansion plans.
WHSmith has turned its focus to the travel side of its business, with plans to open new sites in airports, railway stations and hospitals.
