Big high street retailer with over 250 sites to close ANOTHER store today
A BIG high street fashion chain with over 250 stores is closing another shop today.
River Island is closing down its branch at Vicar Lane Shopping Centre in Chesterfield.
The popular fashion brand will have its final trading day at the end today – Saturday, April 19.
In the lead-up to the closure, the store unveiled a closing down sale, offering a generous 30% off everything.
Sharing the news on its Facebook page, the Vicar Lane Shopping Centre had announced: “Get 30% off full price and sale items, in-store ONLY.
“Don’t miss out, the store closes for good at 17.30pm on Saturday April 19, so now’s the time to grab a bargain!”
It comes imminently after the Sports Direct branch on Newmarket Road in Cambridge shut on Friday after launching a huge closing down sale to clear out stock.
Customers had been piling in to snap up discounts on sports gear, trainers, and top-brand clothing.
And New Look is also permanently closing its branch at the Broadway Shopping Centre in Bexleyheath, south-east London, today after a huge closing down sale.
The fashion favourite, which has around 350 stores across the UK, launched massive discounts to clear stock, with prices slashed by up to 70 per cent.
Shoppers have been flocking to the store to grab bargains, with rails of clothes selling for as little as £3 for tops and £5 for summer dresses.
Locals said they had never seen the store so packed as people rushed to pick up last-minute deals before the shutters come down.
And Poundland is preparing to close it’s branch in Clapham Junction train station, in a blow to commuters.
The store will close on May 2, giving shoppers just a few weeks to say their goodbye.
A closing down sign posted inside the shop read: “We’re closing
2nd May.. Don’t worry, we have another great store in the Southside Shopping Centre near Specsavers.”
The report was first published on the Battersea Beat Instagram page.
Other shops leaving the high street
Beales, one of Britain’s oldest department stores, has launched a closing down sale before it shuts its last remaining shop after more than 140 years.
The company will shut its branch in Poole’s Dolphin Centre on May 31.
The sale includes fashion, furniture, gifts and cosmetics, being sold for up to 70% off.
Beales chief executive Tony Brown blamed the “devastating impact” of the rise in national insurance contributions and the higher minimum wage for the store closure.
History of River Island
IT'S a well-known name on the high street, but did you know that River Island used to be called something completely different?
The fashion retailer actually started out as two separate clothing stores, which only joined forces to become the brand we now know and love in 1988.
The company behind it dates back to 1948, when British entrepreneur Bernard Lewis opened up his first clothes shop in Mare Street, Hackney, in east London.
At the age of 20, he’d launched his debut fruit and vegetable store on Holloway Road in north London, but his foray into fashion proved to be his biggest success.
After expanding to five stores, Bernard called his business Lewis Separates.
During the 1970’s he opened up a chain of clothing stores – 70, to be precise – which he later called Chelsea Girl.
It quickly became one of the UK’s first chain female fashion boutiques.
By 1982, Bernard introduced a further store, called Concept Man, to his portfolio, which offered a range of menswear.
Six years later in 1988, a third brand was formed – this one being called River Island.
A few years later, both Chelsea Girl and Concept Man merged into this one company, which is now run by Bernard’s nephew, Ben Lewis.
Die-hard River Island fans will know that in 2011, Chelsea Girl was re-introduced as a capsule collection within stores.
Meanwhile, high street fashion chain New Look has begun to close stores as it scales back its UK footprint.
It is understood to be shutting nearly 100 stores – equivalent to around a quarter of its 364 shops.
Stores in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, St Austell, Cornwall and Porth, Rhondda Cynon Taf have launched closing down sales.
Reports suggest that the company has been forced to accelerate the pace of store closures due to tax changes in the Autumn Budget.
Meanwhile, Huttons in London will shut its store in the Putney Exchange due to excessive energy costs.
The gift shop became a local icon after it opened in the 1990s.
Why are retailers closing stores?
RETAILERS have been feeling the squeeze since the pandemic, while shoppers are cutting back on spending due to the soaring cost of living crisis.
High energy costs and a move to shopping online after the pandemic are also taking a toll, and many high street shops have struggled to keep going.
However, additional costs have added further pain to an already struggling sector.
The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury’s hike to employer NICs from April will cost the retail sector £2.3billion.
At the same time, the minimum wage will rise to £12.21 an hour from April, and the minimum wage for people aged 18-20 will rise to £10 an hour, an increase of £1.40.
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.”
It comes after almost 170,000 retail workers lost their jobs in 2024.
End-of-year figures compiled by the Centre for Retail Research showed the number of job losses spiked amid the collapse of major chains such as Homebase and Ted Baker.
It said its latest analysis showed that a total of 169,395 retail jobs were lost in the 2024 calendar year to date.
This was up 49,990 – an increase of 41.9% – compared with 2023.
It is the highest annual reading since more than 200,000 jobs were lost in 2020 in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced retailers to shut their stores during lockdowns.
The centre said 38 major retailers went into administration in 2024, including household names such as Lloyds Pharmacy, Homebase, The Body Shop, Carpetright and Ted Baker.
Around a third of all retail job losses in 2024, 33% or 55,914 in total, resulted from administrations.
Experts have said small high street shops could face a particularly challenging 2025 because of Budget tax and wage changes.
Professor Bamfield has 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.”