Blimey things are worse than I thought!

I am still confused by my local store, despite no longer being in the same group as, it still has Burtons, etc inside it, im totally confused by it.

Unless the BHS part left, and I didnt notice

More and more shops may close over the next few years, as owners of the buildings want higher rents and local council business rates get higher.

And less people are visiting shops and spending, there has been a decline in the number of people visiting shops, but on top of that you have people visiting but not spending ie see the goods but go home and buy on the internet cheaper, and then you have had the big increase of online shopping

the bubble will burst on the high street one day, and it will not be pretty, not only are people shopping online, most cities have out grown their cities centres, so whilst City Centres are dying the large out of town centres, which are alot less out of town, are thriving, one in Peterborough was revamped a few years ago, loads of new stores and its doing a roaring trade, another one on the outskirts is planning an extension.

The gamble here is that the large shopping centres wont have anyone to fill the empty space, personally if I was them, I would call BHS bluff, and say they cant half the rent, for half the space, filling the other half will be easier than the whole thing

The problem is that finding other businesses wanting such large floor space are pretty rare given there is loads of empty buildings perhaps for sale rather than rent in the locale so they have the power of choice, and no owner wants to be left with empty property as they have to still spunk the brates.

The Arcadia Group turned BHS into a concessions store with all their brands and probably agreed to contracts with their stores that their products will be sold in BHS stores. A problem I see is they rely too much on clothing. Around the time Allders closed BHS started selling Beds, TVs and more electricals but stopped and it became more about clothing. In my local BHS I see a problem that they have about half the top floor is a restaurant but it closes at around 3pm despite the shop closing at 6pm (9pm on Thursdays) and the restaurant serving dinner type food, compared to Marks and Spencer's restaurant and food to go serving until 5pm and 5:30pm (8pm and 8:30pm on Thursdays)


That isn't true, that is just an assumption that people go for a lower price and their time is worth nothing. I own a retail company with shops and online outlets and I have to say most people would rather go to a shop and have their product instantly and not care they are paying more, they know that when they leave the shop they have their product (if they don't get it stolen or mislaid) and if there is a problem they can come back the next day and get a replacement.


As someone in retail I have to say it's the landlords that are the real issue, most charge too much for their properties or hold out for some huge company who would never want their shop.



The problem is since the 1980s shops stock more and sell more. Shops selling electrical items such as TVs would have been a showroom and clothing shops had a few lines but now they are in retail parks and taking over former supermarkets and supermarkets are huge now and out of town in many cases because high street properties are too small. BHS' problem is more that many of their shops aren't big enough for them to be able to sell more and make more money. However on the other hand you get discount shops like Poundland, Primark and Poundworld who have taken over large former supermarkets and department shops but most floors are unused. I know of a poundland that took over a former Sainsbury's store but they don't use any of the former stock room, part of the former shop floor, the upper floor or the 2 large walk in fridge and freezers and Sainsburys signed a multi decade long lease on it and are still paying the rent and subleasing it to Poundland.

Not surprised, another fine mess left by that odious vile green, asset stripped the company ,loaded it with debt then took a huge untaxed dividend then sold the company on.

How come nice harmless guys like Paul Daniels get shafted in the lottery of life yet odious vile pratts such as green don't.

why on earth would you buy a store, knowing you still have to have stock / brands from the previous owner in it? when you buy something for a £1, its one to take on the debt, but two, so you revive it. Keeping the Arcadia Group concessions, does not give you much room to play with.

They might have had another potential investor/company that backed out, that investor/company might have owned a wholesale company which could supply New products. Having stock and brands from the previous owners us a good thing because you have stock to sell at an agreed discount. Another reason can be that the company that bought BHS owns one of the suppliers and by owning BHS they can sell more products to BHS which will encourage other retailers to stock their products similar to the company that owned Comet, they owned electrical brands. If they own a brand they might rely on BHS and so they would buy it to keep one of their main buyers like JD Sports did with Millets

Yep does not look good for BHS rent reductions or administration looming...

The funny thing is that the industry has just come out and said there are more physical stores selling, music (vinyl and cds) Blu Rays and DVDS then ever before.

Hotel Chocolat, maybe? Rarely see anyone in the local one when I walk past, even when the shopping centre is busy.

I hope tx maxx goes out of business as well as many other shops but hope tx maxxx goes bust as that shop I hate very much

What a pathetic post.

Dad's just had his hair cut, and Chris the woman hair dresser who does it - she used to do Mum's hair - says it's because of all this online shopping.

Still, it's 2,000 jobs gone, so where are they going to get another job. I'm just glad I'm getting close to retirement, and have a full time job looking after Dad as his Carer.

So you'd happily put store owners out of businesses and 1000's of staff on benefits just because you 'hate' the stores ??

How utterly facile.

It would be better for the landlords to accept lower rent and they probably would. Many landlords would prefer to get lower rent than no rent at all and many landlords do rent reductions. I had a shop at a shopping centre where most tenants were paying below the shopping centre's running costs, if they didn't most stores would leave and they would have an empty shopping centre.


Online is an emperor's new clothes type situation, not only with retail but with news, TV and movies. Selling online requires a lot of promotion which would cost more than renting multiple stores. With my own experience selling on Ebay and Amazon the area it's available to is worldwide yet those sales are lower than in store where it is available to people in one town.


Hotel Chocolat make most of their money at Valentine's Day, Mother's day and Christmas which pays for the non busy times. From what I am aware Hotel Chocolat are looking to be in smaller shops and so some will be moving to smaller shops.


TK MAXX (not TX MAXX) would probably only go out of business if there was another large outlet type company. The way TK Maxx works is they buy large amounts of bankrupt, excess, reject and out of season stock usually at auction and sell them ASAP. If there was a rival company that did the same thing it could put them out of business if they were to outbid them at auctions and do better direct deals with companies. Another thing that could happen is they could buy defective stock or like Land of Leather with the "toxic Sofa" case.

This maybe works in smaller towns but successful places large cities with footfall should always get top prices for rents.

If BHS want 75% reductions this isn't really realistic. So many stores expect this but it never happens how many stores have we seen pre pack administrations where they cherry pick the better stores like this year Brantano and Blue Inc have already done this.

However if BHS do call in adminstrators I reckon they will go the way of Focus Diy and Comet and go into liquidation. There larger stores will be sought after and landlords would feel confident of "Woolworths" like demand for the shops. BHS in Carlisle has made way for Primark..

I would rather see Primark replace BHS in Falkirk if it closes down.

It’s the lighting department and restaurant that make BHS, but the Falkirk store has no restaurant in it.

oooh they are awful, they never have decent black shoes in my size.

I dont know about there, is an out of town shopping centre, well more of a neighbourhood one, which has overly expanded, and built a massive amount of empty units, hoping to become a detestation of less of a neighbourhood centre, the truth is that it has a Co-Op, a QD and a Wilkinsons, so the locals are well served. As a destination however it is weak, and whilst I have not been there for a couple of years, despite the last time I went there it having recently had a make over (I think it was sold to another group) just looking at the website, there are no new stores of note, a bookies and something called "Mays Discount Furniture" which is or was in a city center location.

My point is that, they are sure as hell letting units sit empty, rather than renting them out cheaply,

http://www.ortongate.co.uk/floorplan.html

Green has ruined BHS, invested no money into the business then sold it on to a serial bankrupt who no creditors will go near. Such sad news, gutted for all the staff.

Nobodies forcing you to go into tx maxx, you flibbertigibbet....

You would be surprised at how low some shopping centres will go. I previously had a shop in a shopping centre where the asking rent was £25,000 + service charge per year which is already quite cheap but even before negotiation they offered me just over £14,000 per year and free service charge, I was paying more than the other shops and they were willing to discuss dropping the rent to £8,000 per year with free service charge. The location had poor footfall so I left, there were some shops paying virtually nothing for rent but without those paying virtually no rent there would be less footfall. There was also a shop that won 6 months free rent in a competition and they are still there around 6 years later paying just hundreds of pounds a month rent and the shopping centre are paying their rates and electric.

Many shopping centres wouldn't allow discount shops in their shopping centre because it lowers the tone, there are also agreements with some shopping centres where companies like Poundland have agreements that they will be the only fixed price shop in the shopping centre. There were a few Woolworths in shopping centres that became H&M because they didn't allow discount retailers.

There is the option landlords can have where they can put the BHS stores to a rolling lease where it's open for if another company wants it BHS would have 28 days to leave the premises.


TK Maxx sells bankrupt stock and excess stock so if your an average shoe size it is less likely there will be shoes in your size in popular styles. TK Maxx buy stock without not always knowing what the items are so each store has different stock which can cause problems with their adverts as they can't promote specific items. It also has caused recalls, due to their fast turnaround of needing to get products in to store ASAP there have been manufactures not allowing them to sell their items and I remember on the news they had to recall a coat because it had a fishing knife put in to it.


They are probably renting them cheaply but the lack of foot fall probably doesn't pay the staff. Many out of town shopping parks open because the local high streets are out of date and aren't suitable for retail now. in the pre 70s shops were small and sold a small amount of items. Electrical shops used to be more TV showrooms and they would deliver TVs to your house only. Clothing shops too are now bigger with more variety taking former department stores and supermarkets which are no longer suitable for department stores and supermarkets. Many department stores used to have in store factories to make clothes and clean clothes where as now that space is now retail area.