Retailers Closing Shops

Data compiled for Pricewaterhousecooper by the Local Data Company shows on average in 2011 multiple retailers in Britain closed 14 stores a day.

That’s a lot of stores.

The data showed that in 500 town centres there was a net reduction of 174 shops in 2011, which is decrease of.25%.

Home furnishing shops, bookshops, pubs, and travel shops were the hardest hit.  Some of this can be attributed to particular products that are being purchased more and more online.

Charity shops, pound shops, show shops, and bakers, seemed to do the opposite and do well and actually show growth.

Come to think of it, the only really new shops I have been seeing are a few charity shops, and some pound stores.

But this is what is going to happen.  The economy slips, people have less money to spend, there are too many shops, or it is too competitive in a small area, such as a city centre, and not all business are going to make it.

In my town’s city centre there were a couple of retailers who years ago had two shops each the same, both within a few blocks of each other.  There is no way both the shops, selling the exact same product, so close together, are going to survive.  And they haven’t, and in one particular case the retailer went bust and all the shops closed.

Retailers will need to be smart and develop business models which respond to the consumer, but also can be profitable as the amount of money being spent is reduced.