Outdoor clothing chain with 300 stores launches closing down sale at town centre site less than two years after opening
AN outdoor clothing chain with 300 stores is set to close a town centre site less than two years after opening.
Trespass has launched a huge closing down sale at its store in Middlesbrough’s Hillstreet Shopping Centre.
Yellow and black signs reading ‘everything must go’ have been posted on the store’s windows, according to reports by Teeside Live.
The outdoor clothing specialist had opened in the shopping centre less than two years ago.
It had taken a site previously occupied by Monsoon, which pulled down the shutters in summer 2020.
Commenting on news of the closure one local said: “Knew it wouldn’t last long.”
Another added: “Another one bites the dust.”
A third said: “It only been open for two years .”
A precise date for the closure has yet to be announced.
The Sun has contacted Trespass for comment.
Trespass announced it would axe six sites from its estate in July 2023, with the closure of branches including Norwich and Sutton Coldfield following.
However, this appears to be a one-off closure.
Stores close sites for a variety of reasons including that a particular site is not performing or that a lease is coming to an end.
Closures are not always an indication that a brand is struggling.
For example, there may be a store nearby that is performing better or it may be because they want to pick a spot that has higher footfall, such as a retail park.
And it’s not all bad news from the brand and Trespass has since secured a new Norwich site.
Financial results posted to Companies House for the year to 2 July 2023 showed the turnover for the company had reached record levels following a 9% increase to £127.4million.
Within the results the business’ parent company Jacobs & Turner said it was focused on international expansion.
The high street has had a tough few years and just today retailer Quiz said it close as many as a third of its stores.
CLOSURE CHAOS
Plenty of other retailers are closing stores across the country’s high streets as households lean towards online shopping.
Businesses have also been impacted by high business rates and cost pressures and are anticipating a dramatic increase in employment costs from April.
Soaring inflation in recent years has also dented shoppers’ pockets.
The Centre for Retail Research’s latest analysis suggests 13,479 stores, the equivalent of 37 each day, shut for good in 2024.
Fashion chain Monki, owned by H&M, has announced it will close all of its high street stores with one in Arndale, Manchester having shut yesterday.
The Body Shop is pulling down the shutters on five branches on January 15 in Exeter, Plymouth, Horsham, Norwich and Sheffield.
Three other branches have already closed in Cambridge and Hove.
Stationer WHSmith is closing a branch in Bournemouth on January 15.
The Entertainer, which has 160 branches across the UK, has also confirmed it will permanently shutter its branch in Croydon’s Whitgift shopping centre.
RETAIL PAIN IN 2025
The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury's hike to employer NICs will cost the retail sector £2.3billion.
Research by the British Chambers of Commerce shows that more than half of companies plan to raise prices by early April.
A survey of more than 4,800 firms found that 55% expect prices to increase in the next three months, up from 39% in a similar poll conducted in the latter half of 2024.
Three-quarters of companies cited the cost of employing people as their primary financial pressure.
The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has also warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year.
It comes on the back of a tough 2024 when 13,000 shops closed their doors for good, already a 28% increase on the previous year.
Professor Joshua Bamfield, director of the CRR said: “The results for 2024 show that although the outcomes for store closures overall were not as poor as in either 2020 or 2022, they are still disconcerting, with worse set to come in 2025.”
Professor Bamfield has also warned of a bleak outlook for 2025, predicting that as many as 202,000 jobs could be lost in the sector.
“By increasing both the costs of running stores and the costs on each consumer’s household it is highly likely that we will see retail job losses eclipse the height of the pandemic in 2020.”
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