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....

Mothercare

Has someone said that yet?

ELC - toys used to be good but now mostly break two weeks later (esp farm, castle, dressing up expensive and rubbish)
Debenhams - ours is never clean enough, overpriced, understaffed
Body Shop - overpriced
Mothercare - the only reason I ever go in here is to look at the prams and other stuff in RL I then go and find the best price online
Co-op - in high streets maybe but I work at a village one and our profits are up and up......

Stealth Maybe it's just my local branch then? The staff are appallingly sullen and unhelpful.

Oh I never thought of the co-op. don't they specialise in being the only shop in villages for miles around - so most people go there? Certainly like that here in the NE

Co-op is big in the NW. We don't have a supermarket like a Tesco, but some of their stores are sizable.
I can't see them going under, certainly not around here.

WHSs have a lot of contracts as the newsagents within hospitals though so have massive captive markets there

Superdrug - suffering from the Mothercare syndrome - poorly trained and unmotivated staff who know nothing about the stuff they sell.

I noticed in my paper earlier that WHS are looking at some Clintons premises... Booky, I am working in a small bookshop (not in the UK). I was really fed up at some facebook friends of Dh in Belfast; they failed to connect the 'lovely parcels from Amazon' with the 'sad closure of the University Bookshop where we loved to go to booklaunches'.

Body Shop won't go because they have the Body Shop at Home and internet as outlets and as it's owned by L'Oreal it can easily be carried along with the rest of their beauty products. However I do think it is likely that the shops will go. When I was a consultant for BSAH a couple of years ago I spent a saturday in the shop and there can only have been about 50 customers through the door the whole day

for a bit of WHSmith balance - ours always has gigantic queues and is really busy. I probably go in there once a week

Sleepyfergus you def live near me!

I haven't mentioned any shops I hate, I've recently been in all those I've mentioned (exc Clintons). I really want these shops to survive but some feel like they need to revive their business models and reposition themselves, it seems like they have got a wee bit overtaken by the times. Take Thorntons, they were posh chocolates when I was a kid but I don't know who they are targeting now.

Haha at the kooples!!

I went into Body Shop for the first time in years last weekend and was surprised at how nice some of the products are. One of the toners is just like a Liz E one for half the price.

What on earth are you basing these guesses on? For the most part you are citing still profitable firms. Whsmiths and HMV are the main wobblers due to lack of role in the market.

Kooples is a new successful French brand, whistles prices, not really likely to go bust just because you don't like their service. Boden (yick) has no retail overheads and mumsnetters alone keep them in business.

Hotel Chocolate - how is that still open???

I would be devastated if Waterstones went under. I have always had excellent customer service there from friendly and enthusiastic staff.

But WH Smith really are useless aren't they? The one in our town does have a large range of magazines but they don't seem to have any idea what to do with them. They are poorly laid out, sometime just in a heap, and I have often seen magazines that are our of date and should have been removed a long time ago.

I went into C&A once - yes, C&A - and the assistant in the men's department didn't know what a waistcoat was.

The big WH Smiths in Belfast has closed, HMV and The Body Shop have also gone in some of the towns near me.

The Country Casuals (CC) shop in Reading closed last year. The next nearest was Henley on Thames. The shop was taken over by Ethel Austin which closed just a few months later.

Wilko's won't be going anywhere, they have just spent millions rebranding the company. It's hardly flagging.

Although my manager says if they don't develop a good online business then they couls start to fail in about 5 years. Says it all really.

HMV has had a recent boost from the sale of headphones, but how long that continues I don't know.

I'd say Argos has got to buck up. And quickly. During a recession they should be the place to go, but their stock is so limited. And their prices are not competitive. Complete waste.

HMV are pretty likely to pack up. In 2005 one HMV share costed as much as £2.82. Now they are 3.85p each!

I think W.H.Smith is far from in decline, they've consistently improved profits year on year and their share price has steadily increased even throughout the recession. I would be very surprised to see them go.

Body shop
Thorntons
Some of those huge sofa shops and carpet shops
LK Bennett or Karen Millen
Fat Face or White Stuff

What happened to kids clothes ( mini mode?) being sold in boots?