A IBU to predict which shops will close next?

[muttimalzwei]

I am pretty sure I won't be allowed to name them on here but it seems to me that the places where customer service is poor or resting on its laurels are the shops that will be closing down before those where staff actually try to engage with their customers and find out how they can help them. In my town it seems to be well established high street stores (going since at least the 80s) who are just not doing what they could to offer good customer service. And they.ll be next to close....

God I miss Boots.

There's nothing like that here. I think they'll be fine.

Pumpkin patch

mamas and papas

please god let it be the pub behind my house!!!!!!!!!!!!

Boots are fab.

They go the extra mile with my Mum's medication and are in touch with the GP's.

They deliver regularly and at the same time each week and they don't get arsey and the woman who deals with Mum's 'blister' packs has dropped stuff off on her way home.

Pumpkin Patch has gone here too!

Why the pub behind your house?

Lakeland?

WH Smiths for being unbelievably scruffy
Bodyshop for being overpriced
Throntons For just having too many outlets, stopped being special when you can get them in Sainsburys.

HMV they just email continuously

Laura Ashley are overpriced and do are Monsoon.

Hopefully not waterfronts because the staff in ours are lovely.

t-k-max i only like the furniture and most people i know cant be arsed to go through racks of random tat

always seem pretty empty as well

Our co-op is awful, haven't been for years, but needed to pinch it's car park.

Thought I'd better do some shopping, wished I hadn't. Very limited and way more expensive than our little Tesco's.

Some of you are mad. (sorry)

Boots close? They are always, always packed whenever I return to the UK no matter which branch I go in to.
Gap is expanding like crazy overseas.
Clark's is also expanding overseas. Here (china) they are establishing themselves as a luxury but contempory British brand.

Waterstones IMO is likely to go as is the body shop.

Laura Ashley is worth Nearly £85 million so unlikely
WH smith is worth £100 million
Waterstones is worth £51 million, which is surprising as with amazon and kindle. I think people will always have a loyalty to printed books maybe

Lush is worth £36 million by the way

I was suprised to hear that Early Learning Centre is slashing the number of its stores (and may be on its way out altogether)?

My DCs are over the age for it now, but I used to use it a lot, and it always seemed to be packed. What has happened - where are people getting toys now?

Every time I'm in boots there's loads of tills open and still a massive queue really can't see them closing down! Same for HNC and Argos I would say they'd be last to go bust!
Totally agree with whsmith though and waterstones are they the only real bookshop left? Aren't most book sales now ebooks or iBooks now?

Totally agree re thorntons startail they used to be a really special treat just doesn't feel the same when you pick them up with milk and tea bags!

Well worth on paper doesnt really mean anything. Enron was worth $60bn, and then a few weeks later it was worth nothing- the value of a company is just the market's view of future cashflows and that can change rapidly. Retail is all about cashflow management/ stock turn. Businesses dont go bust because they're unprofitable, but because they run out of cash.

There are a few factors that affect likelihood of administration

• If they own their retail premises or rent them. If you're not paying rent, then your break even is much lower plus you've got a leveragable asset base to secure working capital loans if you need them. In this environment, you're not going to be able to rent the premises to AN Other easily, so may as well stay open so long as you can break even
• If they're part of a bigger group (Arcadia) which takes a portfolio approach to divestment/closures and where maintaining a national brand presence is a big consideration.
• If they have a growing international presence/international internet business- as Jing mentioned, brands like GAP and Clarks are doing very well in Asian markets. HK GAP does extremely well in the kid's stuff- the new stuff sells out in days. Chinese parents love Clarks as sits neatly between the cheap crap that mince your kid's feet and the designer stuff. Boden ship here within 5 days and they knock off the VAT so that more than covers the shipping. Again, the kids stuff in particular is very popular.
• Who is your target market and how affected are they by the downturn?

-Things like frequent sales shouldnt necessarily be viewed negatively- rolling clearance is becoming more popular, especially in internet retailing (and actually totally makes sense, because otherwise you have cash tied up in dead stock, which you cant use to buy more stock until you sell it, so may as well get rid asap). Retailing (esp clothes) is very fast moving now, so you can tell within 2 weeks if a line is going to sell or not

I think Waterstones might be ok now that Borders/ Books etc have gone, so they're not sharing the high street market any more and there will always be a "browsers market". If there wasnt, there would be no high street at all as everything would be bought online. That probably expalins how HMV has battled on.

I thought anita roddick was the one who sold it to loreal just before she died? Must admit that l lost all my respect for her then.

Yy to smiths, grubby and messy shop with tat all over the floor.

Waves to Bunty P enfold as another Antonia Forest fan!

Boots will never go - when I worked near our city centre, a trip to Boots at lunchtime was a real pick me up. It was always mobbed and you always come back with more than you intended. Their loyalty scheme is good and offers are worthwhile. I lived in Australia for a while and lamented the lack of Boots or similar.

As for GAP - all the promos and 30% deals do worry me, and their stock holding always seems bizarre (either shed loads or none). They closed down 2 large stores here over the last wee while. I would be gutted if they shut as I love their toddler clothes and it's good for staples for me. They are also where I have bought my maternity clothes (esp for work) from my last 2 pregnancies. I struggled to find anywhere else that held decent, trendy and reasonably priced maternity wear (M&S, I looking at you!)

I never shop in Body Shop these days - far too expensive. Not sure how that happened. It used to be such fun!

WHSmith - agree with most comments. A weird range of stuff crammed in and piled up in the aisles and checkouts. Still on my list of places to go for stationary though but that's maybe cos I have a biggish store locally.

We too have a Laura Ashley located on a retail park next to Home Bargains, TK Maxx and Dunelm. It's a bit of an oddity but if it wasn't there, I would never step foot in it otherwise. Doesn't really fit in with the typical retail park clientele! Also, it's opposite a McDonalds!

New Look - is it me or have theirs prices crept up?

Clarks I do love but again, seem to be getting v expensive for basic shoes and still produce some absolute howlers? I LOVE their cocoa creme ballet shoes, wrote a ridiculously crawly email to them saying how wonderful they were, needed more colours etc and yet they just make them in boring black. I know they aren't going to mass produce a shoe based on just my email but they always seem to be having sales of the same old crap and missing a trick with not diversifying their dependable staples.

I would not wish job losses on anyone, but some of our high street stores are losing their way and have shocking customer service.

As for Mothercare, they are surely a case in point. There was an excellent thread here recently that pinpointed why they are going wrong. Just a total lack of direction and misreading their market. 'Tis very sad.

I would LOVE to see Currys/PC World go to the wall. A despicable company.

The following aren't any great use either:

Comet
WH Smith (always pestering you to buy chocolate when at the till)
RSMcColl/Martins
Argos

Within a few years, most non-food places on the High Street will struggle. Supermarkets and the internet can't be bettered.

Thorntons issued a profits warning before Christmas, but I haven't seen anything recently about how it's doing.

I'm not sure I agree with bad service = likely to close (though I can see why some might find it satisfying if it were true). Our Woollies had excellent service and was always busy.

It's far more likely to come down to things like ownership of physical property, acquisitions mergers and separations, share price and dividend payouts etc.

I love Boots.

Agree with WH Smith, though if it was purely based on customer service it would be Tesco as theirs is the shittest of the shit in my experience. However we all know that Tesco is slowly taking over the universe and we will all shortly speak in some kind of weird 'Tescoesque' language.

Re GAP, as a US transplant, I dont think it's ever been a concept/style of clothing especially well suited to the UK population- "white shirt and chinos" - works better in the US and Asia. I guess they may reduce their number of UK stores, but I'd expect them to maintain some sort of presence.

Agree with edith that custiomer service is only one factor in success. If the shop is basically marketing itself on price (i.e. lowest cost) then no-one really cares about bad service - no-one goes in Primark expecting John Lewis service levels.

Now occasionally you get a company that does both- Amazon is a good example. What you lose with Amazon is "the browse factor". They took the view that most people don't care. They were right. Most people don't. A few people do, and they dont shop there, but you dont need to please everyone to win.

It's about defining your offering to appeal to a certain customer sector, and then delivering on that. Where a lot of retail offerings lose their way is that they try to be all things to all people and end up stranded - Debenhams being a good example. Too crowded/low end to appeal to well-off people, not cheap enough to have mass appeal.

I'd add Debenhams to the list, come to think of it. Shocking customer service, changing rooms always closed and staff never there/don't want to be ther. I avoid it like the plague. |John Lewis girl through and through.

Re: Amazon. Not so sure about losing the browse factor tbh. I can lose hours on there

Did anyone else know that Amazon has the most distressing tab to show your your past purchases (in my case since 2004) The amount of money I have spent there!!

Thorntons lost their way when new people like Hotel Chocolat came in and have better quality chocolate. Think their expansion away from niche to mainstream has cost them dearly. Anyway, they're gone from our town now thanks to greedy landlords wanting more rent. I don't know how Jessops, the camera people are still going.