Poundland in trouble…

[MN2025]

Just read an article on Sky News that Poundland is in trouble and that they’re drafting in advisers to secure the future of the business.

Feel like PL has lost its way over the last couple of years, where Home Bargains and B&M are thriving, Poundland have not…

Problem is… they have too many locations with duplicate stores from when they’ve acquired 99p stores business and some Wilko units too….

We had a massive Poundland in my town which closed down last year.

B&M is much nicer. I can see why people prefer it.

Location is a massive part of it. I live in a deprived area there's three bnms in prominent shopping areas. The one Poundland is ina less popular area so less likely to get footfall.

They seem to be in town centres where there's a b&m in my local retail park

Sad for people who may loose their jobs, but a business model based upon buying the cheapest shit from sweat-shops in China deserves to fail.

I thought it was PoundStretcher that was in trouble, or is it both of them?

https://news.sky.com/story/poundland-owner-drafts-in-advisers-amid-discounter-crisis-13291225

Tbh this comes as no surprise. Their usp was that everything was £1.00 & now the majority of their stock is anything but! There's very little that I can buy from poundland that I can't buy at the same price or cheaper whilst I'm in home bargains or b&m, therefore taking away any incentive to use poundland.

Stupid name for a shop given inflation. Shame cos they used to be great.

Here's hoping it doesn't fold it supports 18,000 job's.

Ours is utterly grim with mainly disinterested staff. Full of tat and very untidy.

It won't be a loss here, and the staff will get jobs elsewhere.

They are not the only high street store struggling. I read Shoe Zone are struggling too. They are blaming a combination of minimum wage increases coming in April and having to pay increased insurance contributions for their employees.

I hope they don't go out of business, ours is quite busy.

Alixpartners are more expensive than Mckinsey! How they're getting good advice.

I've seen lots of articles about the increased incidence of shoplifting that is crippling Poundland and other retailers. So sad.

Like this: www.theoldhamtimes.co.uk/news/24858894.poundland-increase-security-amid-major-shoplifting-issue/

Yes, I agree.

When everything was strictly £1, the quality was cut down to make that price; and they had quite a lot of otherwise good and well-designed products that would have been perfect if they'd used better quality materials and charged £2 or £3 instead - so you'd basically be happily spending £3 rather than wasting £1 on something that would break quickly.

However, when they abandoned that, they lost their cachet - so it was a bit of a lose/lose for them. Even though they've now changed their mindset on pricing, I personally still associate them with cheap tat at unrealistically low prices for quality. I don't know if others also feel this way. Even the name sounds (to me) to signify cheap bargain-basement tat, rather than genuine competitively-priced goods.

If you contrast it with the likes of B&M and Home Bargains (and, tbh, I would also have said Wilkos), you know that you'll get a good deal for what you're buying, but not necessarily an artificially unrealistically low price.

Over the past few years, shoplifting seems to have become something treated as 'a bit dodgy' rather than as an actual criminal offence.

Shops are (rightly) worried about their staff being attacked or worse, and the police don't want to know unless people steal over a considerable value of goods - so it's just become a standard way of acquiring goods by dishonest people, with very little to stop or discourage them.

It’s cheaper to go to Savers and Home Bargains for toiletries and cleaning products. The rest of their stuff is really poor quality.

When I had my DD I was a young mum so I got a part time job in a new Poundland store. Everything was still £1, the shop was fully stocked and always full of customers filling baskets to the brim because you could just pick up anything knowing it was £1.

Now only the cheapest tat is £1.
I know inflation has killed their price point but there’s no excuse for them to be as untidy as they always are.

They've tried to be too many things to too many people. It started out as a place where you could get your cleaning products, toiletries and some food and they had a good range. But they've squashed everything up to make room for clothes and homewares and it's all become a bit (lot) of a mess.

And the everything for £1 was only ever going to be possible at that particular point in time. Inflation, due to whatever drivers, was always going to get in its way.