[Misc] Given the boot...

[The Clamp]

Boots I never really got why they were so popular. Absolutely everything they sold was available cheaper elsewhere.
Even before internet shopping took off.

The staff always had smashing tits.

 

[Beach Hut]

The staff always had smashing tits.

Mrs Hut worked in the main Boots in Brighton for a while, I'll tell her !

 

[Bozza]

They could just ramp the prices up in their airport stores from eye-waveringly expensive to ****ing-how-much in order to help subsidise the high street stores.

 

[Pickles]

The costs of having a physical presence are becoming impossible really.

For example, the former aerial shop in East Street in Shoreham, was £17,500 pa as a fixed overhead.

Edit : That includes the rooms above the the shop, only for business use.

 

[atfc village]

Went in Savers in Worthing and purchased branded tanning oil for £2.99, £10 in Boots. Also medicine distribution has changed quite a bit

Indeed the same insect repellent £2.99 in Savers £9.99 in Boots.

 

[Meade's Ball]

Mrs Hut worked in the main Boots in Brighton for a while, I'll tell her !

Pert and caked in cutprice tanning oil?

 

[FatSuperman]

The costs of having a physical presence are becoming impossible really.

For example, the former aerial shop in East Street in Shoreham, was £17,500 pa as a fixed overhead.

The very large store we had on Champs Elysee was something like €9m per year rent. Absolute madness.

WHSmith are not competing with online, they are moving toward snacks and mags for mass transit stores. The huge challenge for retailers is competing with pure play etailers, whilst not wrecking your relationship with customers by shutting stores. It’s basically lose-lose for incumbents

 

[bWize]

Take a look across the channel the death of the high street appears to be only affecting Brexit UK while France Germany Holland all booming

Absolutely nothing to do with Brexit (but you probably knew that?) The high street has been dying for years and is mainly down to the internet/online ordering habits of the Brits. Woolworths going under was the first real sign of this, which was way before Brexit was even a thing.

 

[Cian]

Most products Boots sell are cheaper elsewhere so hardly a surprise

You've got to game the 3-for-2 and the points offers to bring them below (often heavily below if you stack points offers) elsewhere.

Too much work for most people. Could have cut the overall prices rather than making a game for a group that'll shop anywhere else the second they get cheaper really.



Widespread death of town centres is a very UK and US thing - 100% down to bad bad planning laws.

Not that it can't happen elsewhere - town near me is destroyed from all the big shops moving out to retail parks and only the courthouse brings any life to the centre. In my own town the giant Tesco is at one end of the main street - on stilts above its carpark; and their biggest rival Dunnes (they have clothes-only stores across the North and Scotland but do food in Ireland) are the other end; on the ground floor of an apartment block with a basement carpark. Result is every unit on the main street is full with only one charity shop and one bookie; the rest range from bookshops to menswear to Justin Biebers favourite restaurant

 

[GT49er]

Take a look across the channel the death of the high street appears to be only affecting Brexit UK while France Germany Holland all booming

The High Street as an institution has been in decline for at least ten or fifteen years - long before a referendum on the EU was a gleam in the tory party manifesto writers' eye. How long is it since Woollies closed all their shops? Umpteen other High Street chains too - shoe shops (FHW, Lilley and Skinner, Russell and Bromley), clothes shops (Hepworths, John Colliers), grocery shops (Home and Colonial, International Stores), Dewhurst the butchers and Macfisheries - all long before Brexit. And all the supermarket chains moved their main stores out of town too.
Parking charges, traffic schemes, yellow lines, out of town shopping malls, pedestrianisation, on-line shopping, excessive increases in business rates - all these have caused High Street shops to cash up and go home. And not a single one of these factors had anything to do with leaving the EU.

But no, I guess that facts like those won't stop the ravings of those nutters and idiots who think that leave voters believe in unicorns.

 

[bluenitsuj]

Most products Boots sell are cheaper elsewhere so hardly a surprise

This. Savers or Superdrug are cheaper for almost anything that Boots stock..............................so Mrs B tells me.

 

[bluenitsuj]

Take a look across the channel the death of the high street appears to be only affecting Brexit UK while France Germany Holland all booming

Yet the following all closed before the Brexit vote in 2016. People are still spending but doing it online. Not everything can be attributed to Brexit.

Banana Republic
BHS
Austin Reed
Phones4U
Athena
Blockbuster
Barratts
Tie Rack
Past times
Comet
Borders
Principles
Zavvi
Woolworths and the list goes on.

 

[Gwylan]

Parking charges, traffic schemes, yellow lines, out of town shopping malls, pedestrianisation, on-line shopping, excessive increases in business rates - all these have caused High Street shops to cash up and go home.

I'll get in before Stat Brother does and point out that pedestrianisation and car-free zones increase retail turnover, not decrease it.

I've posted this before but it's quite illuminating. It shows how one French city revitalised its shopping centre ... and yes, more pedestrianisation, wider pavements, more trees play a part but more independent shops play a bigger role. And for those who say culture is diffferent in France, it has the same percentage of retail closures as the UK

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/may/20/from-bleak-to-bustling-how-one-french-town-beat-the-high-street-blues-mulhouse

 

[bluenitsuj]

I'll get in before Stat Brother does and point out that pedestrianisation and car-free zones increase retail turnover, not decrease it.

I've posted this before but it's quite illuminating. It shows how one French city revitalised its shopping centre ... and yes, more pedestrianisation, wider pavements, more trees play a part but more independent shops play a bigger role. And for those who say culture is diffferent in France, it has the same percentage of retail closures as the UK

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/may/20/from-bleak-to-bustling-how-one-french-town-beat-the-high-street-blues-mulhouse

You just have to look at Eastbourne. About £80 Million spent on the new centre, new routes, extra parking, wider paving and planted areas (yet to be done) yet most of the units are still empty, and of the 7 restaurants that reportedly signed up, 5 have now pulled out.

 

[BLOCK F]

Too expensive,and many shops are very badly laid out; you really have to hunt for some items. A number stores are scruffy and the normal opening hours of 9am to 5.30pm no longer work for many potential customers.

 

[Live by the sea]

The WHSmith on London road feels like a pound shop, I agree they will go soon.

To be fair most shops on london road look like pound shops. London road has always been studentville

 

[Gwylan]

You just have to look at Eastbourne. About £80 Million spent on the new centre, new routes, extra parking, wider paving and planted areas (yet to be done) yet most of the units are still empty, and of the 7 restaurants that reportedly signed up, 5 have now pulled out.

That big shopping centre is not going to attract small shops. To repeat: "more pedestrianisation, wider pavements, more trees play a part but more independent shops play a bigger role."

Shopping malls are part of the problem, not the solution

 

[Dave the OAP]

The very large store we had on Champs Elysee was something like €9m per year rent. Absolute madness.

WHSmith are not competing with online, they are moving toward snacks and mags for mass transit stores. The huge challenge for retailers is competing with pure play etailers, whilst not wrecking your relationship with customers by shutting stores. It’s basically lose-lose for incumbents

If WHS goes, there will be a huge problem with post offices as a lot of them moved in with WHS.

With banks practically all having gone on line banking now, if you draw your pension in cash, which a lot of old people do, closing post offices would be a real issue.

Even my parents in law have been targeted by spammers looking to steal money out of their bank account, so you can understand the older generation ( of which I am one) being concerned about this.

Of course a lot of investments made to pay for all of our pensions is in property ...I remember being told that standard life had invested millions in Churchill square which they ended up writing off as the value plummeted as the companies in there were looking to move out or close!

 

[bluenitsuj]

That big shopping centre is not going to attract small shops. To repeat: "more pedestrianisation, wider pavements, more trees play a part but more independent shops play a bigger role."

Shopping malls are part of the problem, not the solution

I am agreeing with you. The problem with these big new shopping centres is the high cost of rent that the developers need to recoup their costs which prices the small independent shops out of the market and we end up with the same old national chains that we see in every shopping centre up and down the country.

 

[BNthree]

Take a look across the channel the death of the high street appears to be only affecting Brexit UK while France Germany Holland all booming

Most French towns I have visited recently all have loads of closed shops on the high streets (only things that seem to be open are banks, bakers, and hairdressers) and everyone is going to the hypermarche on the edge of town instead.