THREE major retailers are closing branches tomorrow in a blow for the high street.
Matalan, Greggs and The Entertainer are shuttering the stores within a matter of hours.
Clothing chain Matalan is closing a site in Chester in a blow to locals while The Entertainer is shutting a location at the Cameron Toll shopping centre in Edinburgh.
Meanwhile, a Greggs branch in Coventry will welcome in pastry lovers for the final time tomorrow.
Shoppers have been left devastated after finding out the three sites are to shut permanently.
Reacting to the Matalan site closing down, one said they were “gutted” while a Greggs customer branded the Coventry branch closure “sad news“.
A The Entertainer customer said the Edinburgh closure was “sad to see”.
It’s worth bearing in mind, its common practice for retailers to open and close branches based on demand and trends.
Big businesses like Greggs, The Entertainer and Matalan often review store performances and decide whether to keep them open or not.
Sometimes they may decide to open a store in a different – more popular – location, but it doesn’t mean that the chain is struggling.
For example, last January, Greggs said it would open 160 new branches over the following 12 months as part of major expansion plans so it’s not just closing locations.
The retail sector has taken a big hit in recent years as businesses grapple with lower footfall and surging rental costs.
Figures published by the Centre for Retail Research yesterday revealed over 13,000 high street stores closed for good in 2024.
The centre’s analysis showed 13,479 stores, equivalent to 37 a day, permanently shut their doors over the calendar year, up from just under 10,500 in 2023.
It said that 11,341 independent stores were shut during the year, a 45.5% jump against the previous year.
Meanwhile, 2,138 stores were shut by larger chains over the 12 month window.
Major chains including Ted Baker, Homebase and Carpetright shut stores after entering insolvency over the year.
Insolvency is when a company cannot pay its debts or doesn’t have enough assets to cover them.
Pressure on the sector is not expected to abate any time soon either.
The Government announced in its Autumn 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.
But it’s not all been bad news across the sector, with some retailers bucking the trend and opening branches across the UK.
Yesterday, Co-op announced plans to open 75 new stores in 2025, while Aldi has been opening dozens of stores.
In other news, eight high street chains are closing shops between them in January.
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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