To ask which shops are on the verge of failure

[curiousbeak]

I'm so depressed with the uk high street. Specifically British companies. The likes of Arcadia group, new look (already on its way out), next, oasis , Debenhams etc etc

The clothes are just terrible quality and most stores and staff and just tired, uninspiring and lacking any kind of chicness.

The wave of European brands seem to be killing our home grown business with their beautiful stores and chic offerings.

Who do you think is on the way out?

Lucisky - me too!

My work "uniform" - black straight leg trousers, long sleeve, long line, lightweight blouse comes from there. Everyday clothes that fit an apple shaped size 18. They'd better not disappear!

Another poster made a good point about the how leisure activities have changed & more demands for our dollar. I was a teen in the 90s & virtually every weekend my friends & I would go shopping/window shopping. If not it would be too the cinema. We would have a cheeseburger from McDs & on birthdays it would be Harvester.

Brunch was not a thing, I don’t remember so many chain restaurants. Going for a coffee wasn’t a thing & gyms were sweaty depressing places in a leisure centre. Things have really changed!

I was in the central London Matalan recently. Nice selection of kids clothes but ladieswear was abysmal. It looked like something out of Australia's Target in the late 1990s! At least Primark manages to be on trend.

Also spotted some new stores is not seen before - Stradivarius (not violins) and Reserved, which is apparently a Polish brand and had some decent pieces.

I hate shopping online. But I also hate that my size isn't catered for on the high street!
My new look, small curves range, barely anything above a 16 (I'm an 18) DP is teeny and not a lot that appeals, h&m, nope. Sizes confuse me. Even primark can fail me there.

Asos have a massive curves range, simply be, even boohoo! Now if these places can make trendy, pretty and not frumpy clothing and make their website not want to poke my eyes out, why can't the high street brands?!
I'm 39 this year.I feel too old for the high street, too fat.but I want a shopping experience.

My local mall now is filled with Yankee candle shops, smoothie bars, shoe shops and the odd gadget type shop. The city overall has lots of indies (were famous for a certain shopping/tourist area) and we're a destination shopping city. Unless you're a student or stick thin, nothing.

The high street needs to look at who they're alienating. Toys r us is no surprise. Always thought they were over priced and played on their baby department.

It looked like something out of Australia's Target in the late 1990s

Target still looks the same in Australia. How it is still alive and hasn't succumbed to the stranglehold of Kmart is beyond me.

I don't often go into a whs but I happen to have been into the 3 nearest ones to me over the past few months and I was so surprised at how run down they were.

Threadbare filthy ripped carpets,
Mess everywhere.
They look close to being dilapidated.

There's an m&co in a nearby town and I'd never heard of it before and that was just an empty random mess of a shop too.
Can't imagine that being popular.

What about millets?
It's the same shop as blacks (identical other than brand) and they always have deals on and the shops are just selling the same bits you can pick up yet even cheaper still from go outdoors.
I can't imagine that sticking around.

Yet new mountain warehouses which are quite pricy seem to be popping up everywhere.

Fat face is popping up everywhere too, but that seems over priced to me too

I love a Waterstones.
My favourite shop to waste time in and always end up spending money when I hadn't planned to as everything is so well lard out.
Hope they don't go.
I hate buying books online. I like to feel them first

Always amazes me how Jewellery shops seem to do do well. Our shopping centre has about 7.

Chugger77 in a nearby town, both independent jewellery shops closed last year, just a chain-store left, this in the 'affluent' SE.

I think Sainsbury's are struggling & the grocery side is going backwards but this is hidden because Argos figures are now included.

Walmart is investing big time in the US buying up on-line companies. So although ASDA had a good christmas, I do wonder if Walmart will look to sell ASDA off this year - The UK large supermarket market is saturated as people stop doing 'big shops' and go back to shopping around?

I can see WHS closing high st stores, as others have said their main growth is in stations/airports.

I really don't see the point of department stores now & doubt if many will survive the next decade, bar the odd exception.

whatever your views on Brexit, 2018 is going to be a bumpy ride and I think many weaker retailers will fail. In the long run this could open up opportunities for local independent stores, but with an estimated 20% over-capacity in retail space coming down the line I can only see more empty shops on the high st, surely we've hit capacity for charity shops, nail bars and bookies?

Sorry, I meant 2019 re: Brexit.

I thought Evans and Wallis had already folded. They both disappeared from our town a couple of years ago. (the outside Evens space still empty and the shopping center Wallis space is now a Roman, or whatever it's called - don't know who that's actually aimed at)

Smiths - the one in our shopping center has just had the Post Office moved into it at the back where the CDs and DVDs used to be. The beautiful old stone building which used to house it now stands empty on the high street. It's a complete PITA ! The layout of the front of the shop makes getting through it like struggling through some old jumble sale. Barely can get a pushchair through sometimes. Then because of the till being about 2 inches from the door surrounded by too close shop fittings it only takes one person to be waiting at the till to mean you're squeezing your way OUT of the damn shop, excuse me, excuse me'ing and knocking over cardboard displays

"I hate buying books online. I like to feel them first"

I feel like that about clothes buying.

Clothes shops are all pretty much clones of each other and don't seem to have a USP any more. The only difference seems to be the pricing. Basically it is coming down to the lowest common denominator, and people will expect Primark pricing everywhere and online.

Am going to Meadowhall today and will report back later.

Our WHS has just been refurbished, looks much better. Always seems to be relatively busy. What probably keeps them going in addition to airports is the fact that they were - and I assume still are - distribution points for all independent newsagents in smaller towns and villages that have them. My Saturday job was in an independent newsagents and all the newspapers came in from WHS.

Our Waterstones is always very busy I'm glad to say. We've not long lost Jones the Bootmaker but otherwise we have pretty much every other shop on this list bar Zara. Mothercare went some time back. Majority of them generally seem pretty busy most of the time.

I don't ever buy clothes online, I just hate it. I like to go into the shop, try stuff on, buy it and take it home. I'll buy expensive books online to get discounts (talking £30-£40 coffee table types, which I do have quite a lot of) but otherwise I get them from Waterstones. CDs and blu rays will be a mix of online and our local HMV.

What is not helping the state of the high street are councils putting parking charges up ridiculously. It just encourages people to buy even more online or to go to out of town shopping centres with free parking, leisure facilities alongside etc. Then the stores go, leaving empty shops and no business rates paid to councils. It's the most short sighted thing imaginable and I just don't understand why councils don't see this when EVERYONE is telling them so.

Wallis is in Debenhams and I think Evans may be too as are a few other brands that used to have their own stores.

I said to someone about the parking charges in town and it was true what they said - if it was really cheap or even free all the time, people would just leave their cars there to go to the station ( for example) or shop for hours, then there wouldnt be any free spaces for anyone else to do their shopping. I know its discourages people from going to the local shops, but i guess they have to charge for the car parks and the staff that have to pick up the money from the machines each day and so on. our car park in town is free after 1pm on saturday and all day sunday -its always rammed then as the shops shut around 5 or 6pm and a fair number do open on sunday. the bigger town near me its parking all day long every day.

Why should council car parks be free? they cost a lot to build, and then there are running costs of maintenance, staff, ticketing equipment, insurance etc. The land they occupy could be put to better use financially and as we all know, local councils are struggling to fund essential services, so I think it's reasonable to charge, with an exception for people with mobility issues.

Remember that by 2019, over 1/2 of all English councils will receive no funding at all from Central Government, so if they see a commercial opportunity,I'd fully expect them to make the most of it.

It is easy to have free car parking for shoppers for 2 hours. Our council have car parking charges to try and get people to use public transport. They keep putting it up, although they had to reverse the last rise as shops were complaining so much about the reduction in shoppers.

I can see why they charge fees, but the big places in essex such as lakeside / bluewater etc etc are all free parking , so people will just leave it and go there for the day! same with the supermarkets not charging or refunding the charges if you spend a fiver in there or something - its all made it harder for the little shops in town to compete with them.
2 hours free in town would make such a difference though, but i cant see our council doing this - i am surprised the ' free after 1pm' thing is still going, but it does generate a lot more shoppers.

mountain warehouse how they make profit I don't know! Overpriced

ifailed They cost a lot to build? Most of our council car parks are just open spaces, there is no building, security, barriers. Hell, half of them don't have lights at night or CCTV! We're not talking loads of NCP multi storeys.

In our town, the borough council have just increased parking charges by between 33% and 45% percent despite making £2 million PROFIT on car parking last year. They have even abolished 1 hour parking in some car parks with a minimum of 2 hours charge. They charge from 8am - 8pm Mon-Sat and 10am - 8pm Sundays. In the city just 7 miles away, in the same county, the city council car parking charges are slightly cheaper but stop at 5pm and have a cheap £2.20 all day for Sundays.

Charging something is reasonable, but this is now getting stupid.

The80sweregreat there's no such thing as free parking, someone paid for it to be built, and someone pays for it to be managed. In the cases you mention, that will be the lease-holders of the shops who pay the landlord, who in turn pass on the cost to their customers.

ShatnersWig I can't comment on your town, but can point out that Councils need to increase their income to cover their costs, they do that by increasing Council Tax, Business rates and service charges, like car parking.
Cars are expensive to Councils, they have to maintain the roads from their budgets, the more cars on the road, the more it costs. If they can reduce the number of cars and persuade people to walk, cycle or use public transport, it reduces their costs, hence one reason why they raise parking charges.
At the heart of this is an expectation from many car owners that they should be able to store their vehicle on land maintained by the public purse for free - whether on a car park or on the road. Maybe if people had to pay the true cost of this benefit they might re-think their use of their car?

Car parks are housing that can't be built ...

But councils also have to care about their centres and the shopping there.

@YoloSwaggins:

@justwanttoweeinpeace, you've basically described WholeFoods 😜 Clean eating, vegan stuff, amazing takeaway counter.

Who owns Wholefoods? Amazon, I believe.

I used to shop at Fresh'n'Wild in Clapham - was just as @justwanttoweeinpeace described but pre-Instagram. I think Wholefood bought them too (and also opened a huge shop on Kensington High Street?)