John Lewis - 8 stores going

[SerendipityJane]

Not great for fans of instore shopping.

I'm not surprised all the 'At Home' stores are going - I live near the Croydon one and it's always been useless - too small to have many appliances, some electronics, a few gifts but not much selection, and how often do people buy crockery etc? I used to only go when I got the free coffee and cake vouchers.

Thing with department stores is I expect them to have everything useful. As soon as they started struggling to compete with online, they moved to having more 'gift' and 'experience' items and less and less stuff people really want to buy. I'd like to see major malls merging a number of units to create a megastore in each city, that really could be a destination because they would stock what you wanted to buy.

I'd like to know who owns most of the shopping centres and charging extortionate rents, too.

Literally the only two JL stores I regularly shop in are the Croydon Home one and the little one at Kings Cross - and they're both going.

I can't see the Hammerson/Westfield development coming off tbh. I already make the journey to Bromley as Croydon is so run down comparatively, and it's getting worse and worse each year.

The Croydon Home one never took off. Empty carpark, wrong location and limited stock. Surprised Horsham isn't one for closure. It is too large and service dreadful. The lack of an annual bonus was a clue they were already in difficulties.

I'd like to know who owns most of the shopping centres and charging extortionate rents, too.

The thing is, the fewer tenants, the higher the rents have to be.

It was crystal clear back in 2005 when Allders went (or 2008 when Woolworths went if you were waiting for confirmation), what the direction of travel was going to be. A lessening demand for physical shops, leading to a reduction in demand and thus an increase in rent for those poor sods left. Only they ain't stupid and hopefully used the lack of demand to negotiate their own (albeit temporary) reprieve.

A truly vicious cycle.

I wonder about the future of Selfridges in Brum now. Plus the other bigger units in the Bullring. Because as the pull is reduced by the closure of John Lewis, the reduced footfall is going to have a knock-on effect.

All of a sudden the closure of Birmingham to through traffic doesn't really seem an issue of any description anymore.

Oh I liked the little Kings Cross one. Very handy for emergency presents when I was passing through, but I can’t just jump on a tube to buy a single item any more: I have to plan around what I can get at my local Argos which is ten minutes walk away.

Although there always seemed plenty of people in the John Lewis at Grand Central, Birmingham, I was quite surprised at JL putting their store there. I would have thought that JL actually being in the Bullring itself would have been a more profitable venture.
Another John Lewis fan here & thank goodness they are keeping the ones in Leicester & Nottingham (touch wood)

It’s got to be location for the Birmingham one. JL clearly not enough of a draw in itself anymore to pull crowds to a new destination.

I like a browse in John Lewis and a trip to the cafe but I don’t often buy anything anymore. When I was a child in the 80s I’d go there with my Mum to buy all kinds of things from sewing patterns to Christmas decorations. We were a working class family not wealthy at all, and now that demographic would go to somewhere like the Range for those things. John Lewis is very much a luxury offering.

I thought JL had gone down the pan when we went to the Croydon store to buy a sofa set. We found 2 lovely (and expensive) ones but we're concerned as we have a narrow turn from hallway to living room.

Not only do JL not send our a team to measure but said that if they couldn't get the them in on delivery day that they would just leave them in the front garden and we would still have to pay. (All other companies had said either they would send a site team beforehand or that if they had to take back we would get a full refund minus a delivery fee of about £50).

Staff member couldn't answer when I asked her why on Earth we would gamble nearly £2k with them.

DH was giggling as I apparently said " But you're John Lewis" with total incredulity!

@Alicenwonderland, worse. Tamworth’s my nearest.

I thought that Grand Central was a strange location for the Birmingham JL too.

It’s got to be location for the Birmingham one. JL clearly not enough of a draw in itself anymore to pull crowds to a new destination.

And that's the problem ... the fewer stores in town, the less people will be going. Therefore a smaller pie for all the remaining stores to have ot share. And so on.

I think we're going to see a brief tussle between JL, M&S and Debenhams until there's a last person standing. And that will be a hollow victory.

Presumably M&S food will go head to head with Waitrose, so if I were a betting person, I'd say Debenhams might be first squeezed.

DW has just recalled all the times we went to John Lewis and were disappointed ...

John Lewis’s challenge is that people want stuff as cheaply as possible and will buy online to save a few quid, simultaneously moaning that stores like JL aren’t rolling out the red carpet and attending to their every whim whilst charging the same as an online retailer with no physical infrastructure to pay for.

I'm surprised that any department store is still going - they just sell what other shops on the high street are selling. What's different about them?

It's very sad that lots of people will lose their jobs but it seems like a poor business model.

happysun yy pp, such a shame & not sure how Croydon will recover now I can’t see Westfield ever being built now☹️

John Lewis’s challenge is that people want stuff as cheaply as possible and will buy online to save a few quid

One of the failures DW noted was cast-iron pans. Not your "La Custy" premium range or whatever (that are enamelled). But proper old-style cast iron pans. May as well have asked for an elephants ear in a bun.

In the end we spent £80 on a 3-piece set online that we could not be happier with. I don't think we were skimping, and would have paid more.

So it's not just that.

There's also a cookware (or was - not been that way for a while) shop in Brum that also didn't have what we wanted in stock. Apparently it was more important to stock measuring jugs in a range of colours. Which hints at the problem of only stocking "what sells" at the expense of actually being a proper shop.

DW has just remembered we were last at Grand Central 2 years ago. And that was only to meet up with DS for lunch. Not been into town since.

Debenhams have already said theIr Birmingham store is closing down and with John Lewis now going there will be a lot of empty shops in Grand Central
Used to be a nice day out with lunch but shopping In stores has changed forever now
I’m very disappointed

I love JL. Their website annoys me so I "showroom" in their store in Oxford Street then order from them online. The website always offers the most expensive products first so you have to plough through to find the better value ones. Also, I like to look and try out the lighting and furniture before buying. I love to shop there at Christmas because the gifts are rather good. I hate their Christmas ads, and the flogging of whatever soft toy features in any given year.

I like the attentive staff though one conned my husband into buying a huge "Bodum" teapot for my birthday because he was convinced by the salesperson that the tea leaves "needed the room to brew". Needless to say, the rubber inlay of the infused spilt on it less than six months later and I only used it when we had company. I then bought a much smaller crockery pot from Amazon for £15. The Bodum cost twice as much.

For cookware we use procook.co.uk because JL are way too expensive.

I'm sorry for the employees who will be losing their jobs but john Lewis is really expensive. I don't frequent JL often but you can get a lot of the stuff cheaper elsewhere!

I'm so sad - I love browsing in JL and I love a trip to Birmingham..

It's like all the nice things are going and we'll be left with miserable cut price online shopping and empty city centres.. BOOOOO!!!

"The website always offers the most expensive products first so you have to plough through to find the better value ones"
Not if you sort by price!
JL can't afford to keep open stores as showrooms so it really is a case of 'use it or lose it'

@LIZS I'm surprised Horsham isn't for the chop either. I reckon it's only the fact that's it's linked to the Waitrose on the same site that saved it.

May as well have asked for an elephants ear in a bun

Never heard that phrase before but I love it !!

@Dicotyledon

They built a whole shopping centre in Birmingham around JL. Thats that shopping centre destroyed then.

Absolutely what I was thinking. It was a flagship store that the new Bullring was built around. It was a lovely store but never seemed terribly busy when I have been in.

It was the "Grand Central" shopping centre that housed John Lewis. The Bullring has Debenhams and Selfridges for now.

Grand Central itself is a testament to the new way of thinking. Rather than spend any money improving the railway lines that go under it (which was deemed "too expensive", HS2 ) the Big Idea was to plonk a shopping centre on top of it to distract from the journey.

Oops.

I meant Grand Central not the Bullring of course, but I see them as linked. Bad news whatever you call it.